Class „ .„ 

Book 

Copyright N° , 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



Rev. W. C. Nowell. 



LECTURES 

ON THE 

BOOK OF REVELATION 

BY 

REV. W. C. NOWELL 



WITH A BRIEF SKETCH OF THE 
AUTHOR'S LIFE AND SIX 
CHOICE SERMONS 



Raleigh 

Edwards * Brotjghton Printing Company 
1910 



4 



©CI.A273021 



To My Dear Wife 

MARY LACY NOWELL 

Who Has Been Such a Blessing 
to Me in This and All My 
Other Work 

This Little Book Is 
Affectionately Dedicated 



iii 



PREFACE. 



This little book is written especially for the or- 
dinary Bible reader, who generally considers the 
Book of Revelation a profound mystery. The au- 
thor does not claim to be infallible in his interpre- 
tations, nor does he expect every one to agree with 
him in his views. His aim is to give the simplest 
interpretation of the symbols and figures used in 
the book, and thereby make it interesting as well 
as profitable. After long and earnest study of the 
Book of Revelation, the author has given to the 
reader what he conceives to be the most likely 
meaning of the book, by interpreting its symbol- 
isms in the most rational manner. There may be 
errors in this little book; but if so, the author 
hopes and believes that they will do no real harm, 
as they will not misconstrue any Bible truth, nor 
add to, nor take from, God's word. 

Wendell, N. C, July, 1910. W. C. N. 



V 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Lecture Page 

I. Covering chapters four, five and six 1 

II. Covering chapters seven and eight 9 

III. Covering chapters nine, ten and eleven 16 

IV. Covering chapters twelve and thirteen 28 

V. The vials or last plagues. Covering chapters four- 
teen, fifteen and sixteen 42 

VI. Covering chapters seventeen, eighteen and nineteen . . 57 

VII. The Millenium. Covering chapter twenty. 71 

VIII. The New Jerusalem. Covering chapters twenty-one 

and twenty- two 84 

Sketch of the Author 110 

Six choice sermons 143 

Sermon 

I. The Substitute 145 

II. The King in His Beauty 153 

III. The Rock 159 

IV. Saved from Sin 165 

V. Retribution 171 

VI. The Oneness of God's People 179 



vii 



INTRODUCTION. 



The reader is requested not to skip over this in- 
troduction, as is frequently the case in taking up a 
new book, because in it will be found many things, 
which will help to a more perfect understanding of 
the balance of the book. 

These Lectures originated as follows : While liv- 
ing in Spring Hope, N. 0., some two years ago, a 
certain friend of mine asked me to explain in my 
next prayer meeting talk the sixth chapter of the 
Book of Revelation. I told him I couldn't well do 
that without taking up the entire context, which 
would include that part of the book from the be- 
ginning of the fourth chapter to the end of the 
eleventh. So, after considering the matter, I con- 
cluded to give a series of talks on the entire book. 
I did so, and as they made a profound impression 
on the minds of those who heard them, my wife 
and others urged me to write them up and have 
them published. 

After coming to this place, Wendell, N. C, I de- 
cided to deliver these talks again, under the head 
of "Lectures on the Book of Revelation." These 
Lectures were so well received by all classes of the 
people, that, after much urging and encourage- 
ment, I finally decided to make the attempt to 
write this little book. 

But the main object of this Introduction is to 
give the key to the Book of Revelation and the 
plan of its arrangement, 

I will give the plan first. By reading the book 
carefully, we will see that it is divided into four 
main sections, as follows: 

The first three chapters contain the introduction 
to the book, and the messages to the seven churches 
of Asia. This is the first section, and is omitted 

ix 



X 



Introduction. 



in these Lectures. The second section contains 
from the fourth to the eleventh chapters inclusive. 
The third includes the twelfth to the nineteenth in- 
clusive. The fourth and last section includes the 
other three chapters. 

The second section, being the first in these Lec- 
tures, may be denominated the section of the Seals 
and the Trumpets. This covers the period from the 
beginning of Christianity to the ushering in of the 
Millennium, with special reference to the civil ene- 
mies of the church of God on earth. Of these civil 
enemies the first is the Jewish nation. The second 
is the pagan Roman Empire, or simply the Roman 
Empire East and West. Included in this also are 
the Saracen and Turkish powers. 

The third section may be termed that of the 
Beasts and the Vials. This also covers the very 
same period of time as the first in these Lectures, 
but with special reference, not to the civil enemies 
of the church, but to the ecclesiastical or spiritual 
enemies thereof. 

The fourth section may be called Eschatology, 
or the last things. This includes the Millenium, 
the last sharp conflict of the church with all her 
combined enemies, under the head of Gog and Ma- 
gog, the resurrection, the judgment, and the final 
separation of good and evil. 

The key to a book is a brief statement of what it 
contains or teaches. It is generally couched in the 
name the book bears. Here, however, the name, 
Revelation, is general, not definite. So the true 
key is to be found by answering the question, reve- 
lation of what? 

In chapter 6 :2 we read : "And I saw and behold 
a white horse : and he that sat on him had a bow ; 
and a crown was given unto him : and he went 
forth conquering, and to conquer. " Again, in 
chapter 19:11 we read as follows: "And I saw 



Introduction. 



xi 



heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he 
that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, 
and in righteousness he doth judge and make war." 

The first of these passages states the beginning 
of a conflict between Christ and his followers, and 
Satan and his followers, which conflict is ex- 
pressed in the first passage, not only as beginning, 
but as continuing also. In the second passage we 
will see by reading the balance of the nineteenth 
chapter that this is the end of that conflict, and 
that Christ and his people are the conquerors. 
Now we can give a statement of what the book of 
Revelation reveals, and that is the key. 

It reveals, in symbolic language, and in symbolic 
terms, how Christ, the embodiment of all good, is 
conquering and will finally triumph over, Satan, 
the embodiment of all evil. 

The phases under which Satan comes in conflict 
with Christ and his church are the three which 
first arrayed themselves against them in deadly 
conflict, viz. : The Jewish nation, the Roman Em- 
pire, and Popery. 

It is well, also, to give here an explanation of the 
numbers which are frequently used in Revelation. 
The most common is seven. This may be called a 
sacred as well as a perfect, or complete number. 
It is doubtless founded on the seven days compos- 
ing a week, the first and most common division of 
time. Then again we have the number four. This 
denotes completeness also, derived, perhaps, from 
the four seasons of the year, and the four points of 
the compass, as we would say. Twelve is also a 
favorite number in the book of Revelation, as well 
as in that of Daniel. It is doubtless founded on the 
twelve months of the year, the twelve patriarchs, 
and the twelve apostles. Again, 1260 days is com- 
mon in Daniel, as well as in Revelation. It always 
means 1260 years. Forty and two months denote 



xii 



Introduction. 



the same number, each month containing 30 days. 
Three years and a half mean the same likewise. 
Also, time, and times and a half signify the same. 
Time one year, times two years, and a half year 
make three years and a half, or twelve hundred 
and sixty days. 

The writer of the book of Revelation was John, 
the son of Zebedee, the brother of James. He is 
commonly called the beloved disciple. He lived to 
be very old, and is supposed to be the only one of 
the twelve apostles who died a natural death. He 
wrote the Gospel bearing his name, and the three 
short epistles likewise that are called by his name. 
He is supposed to have written the Revelation 
about the year 96 A. D. It is the last book of the 
Bible ever written and is a most fitting and beau- 
tiful ending of the Sacred Scriptures. John was 
said to have been banished by the Roman Emperor 
Domitian to Patmos, a little island in the iEgean 
Sea, between Asia Minor and Greece, because he 
was an active Christian. While on that island in 
banishment he had the wonderful visions related 
in the book of Revelation, of which the following 
Lectures are an attempted explanation. 



LECTURE I. 



This Lecture covers chapters four, five, and six. 
Read the chapters carefully before reading the 
Lecture. 

After John had received the messages to the 
seven churches in Asia, he looked and saw a door 
opened in heaven, and heard a voice calling him to 
come up there and he would learn of things which 
should be hereafter. Immediately he was in the 
spirit, that is, in a condition in which he could see 
and hear spiritual or heavenly things, as the apostle 
Paul was when he was caught up to the third 
heaven. He then saw a throne set in heaven and 
one sat upon it. This, of course, is a symbolic repre- 
sentation of God the Father similar to that in Eze- 
kiel, first chapter. The apostle does not attempt 
any description of Him who sat on the throne, ex- 
cept that of the glowing of precious stones, or, as 
Ezekiel has it, of burning coals of fire. Four and 
twenty elders were sitting round about the throne 
clothed in white, and with crowns upon their heads. 
These elders represent some of God's highest serv- 
ants, either human or angelic, we know not which. 
The lightnings, thunderings and voices denote 
God's almighty power. The seven burning lamps 
denote the fullness of the Spirit of God. The sea of 
glass shows the general glory of the scene. In and 
around the throne were "beasts," or living crea- 
tures, full of eyes. These denote the very highest 
of God's created beings. Being full of eyes shows 
their vast knowledge, wisdom and experience. These 
living creatures are described as having different 
appearances, denoting the different things they 
stand for or represent. The one like a lion denotes 
strength. That one like a calf or ox denotes patient 
endurance. The one like a man shows intelligence. 
1 



2 



Lectures on Revelation. 



That one in the form of an eagle shows exaltation. 
All these living creatures are represented as giving 
glory to God continually, and the elders fall at His 
feet and cast their crowns before Him. 

This whole chapter gives a manifest display of 
the God of the old Testament in all His glory, His 
power, and His holiness. But as there is no Christ, 
no mediator, He seems unapproachable in His aw- 
fulness, especially to poor sinners as we are. 

But it is a very suitable prelude to the fifth chap- 
ter, which ushers in the new dispensation and the 
Kingdom of Heaven. 

The fifth chapter reveals a book in the right hand 
of God the Father, written within and on the back 
side, and sealed with seven seals. A book in those 
days was a scroll rolled on a piece of wood, as a wall 
map in our days rolled on a stick. This book was 
as a long piece of vellum or dressed leather, written 
on both sides, and rolled up and sealed in seven 
different places. When the first seal was broken, 
it could be unrolled to the second, and what was on 
that part could be seen. Then, by breaking the 
second seal, one could see what was on the scroll 
to the third seal, and so on. 

This book was a symbolic representation of God's 
purposes and plans in the scheme of man's redemp- 
tion. And it further revealed the terrible conflicts 
which were to take place on the earth between the 
kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. 

This book was sealed, and none were found wor- 
thy, or whose right and privilege it could be, to 
open and read therein, until the Lamb appeared in 
the midst of the throne. This Lamb seemed as if 
it had been slain. It had also seven horns and seven 
eyes. The slain lamb can be no other than Jesus 
the Lamb of God. The seven horns denote perfect 
or almighty power, as a horn is the emblem of 



Book With Seven Seals. 



3 



power; and the seven eyes symbolize his perfect or 
infinite ability to see and to know all things. The 
term seven denotes fullness, or perfection. He was 
called the Lion of the tribe of Judah, because he 
descended from that tribe, and he was the first or 
greatest of the tribe. He is called the root of 
David, because he as God was David's creator. In 
another place He is called the offspring of David, 
because, as to His humanity, He was a descendant 
of David's line. He alone could take and open the 
book, because He alone was able to fulfill the condi- 
tions. And these conditions were, that He should 
take our sins upon Himself, and die for them in 
our stead, and rise again from the dead, and ascend 
to heaven, and become our intercessor. This none 
could do but the Son of God. 

When the Lamb took the book, as he had a right 
to do, the living creatures and the four and twenty 
elders fall down and worship him, showing that he 
is God, equal with the Father. The living creatures 
and elders also are said to have harps, which were 
symbols of praise, and golden vials filled with odors 
or incense, which is said to be the prayers of saints. 

In other places in the book of Eevelation, the 
prayers of saints are spoken of as incense with 
which God is well pleased. This shows that the 
prayers of God's people here on earth have a great 
deal to do with His dealings with mankind. In the 
ninth verse, the living creatures and the elders sing 
a new song, and in praising the Lamb, say to him, 
that he had redeemed them with his blood. This 
would seem to show that these beings were some dis- 
tinguished ones of the human family. But the re- 
vised version reads it differently. So it is best, per- 
haps, to consider them to be some of the highest 
orders of the heavenly hosts. The chapter closes 
with a representation of the holy angels in vast 



4 



Lectures on Revelation. 



multitudes together with the living creatures and 
elders praising God and the Lamb for their wonder- 
ful works. In the Introduction, it was stated that 
the church, or the Kingdom of God, was to encoun- 
ter three cruel persecuting powers, viz. : The Jewish 
nation, the Roman Empire, and Papal Rome, all of 
which would be finally overcome. This accords 
with what is said in Dan. 2 :44 : "And in the days 
of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a king- 
dom, which shall never be destroyed : and the king- 
dom shall not be left to other people, but it shall 
break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, 
and it shall stand forever. " 

In the sixth chapter, which we have now reached, 
we have a symbolic representation of how God, in 
accordance with what Jesus himself had predicted, 
brought speedy destruction upon the Jewish people 
as a nation, or commonwealth. This judgment be- 
gan to fall upon the Jewish nation and their cher- 
ished city, Jerusalem, in the year 70 A. D., when 
the Roman army under Titus took and partially de- 
stroyed Jerusalem. And in the siege and sack of 
the city, the calamities were so awful that Jesus, in 
speaking of them, said, Matt. 24 :21, that such 
things had never been before, nor should ever be 
again. And this dreadful event was made a type of 
the great judgment day. And in the year 135 A. D. 
another revolt was quelled in Judea by the Romans, 
in which a half million more of the Jews perished. 
Thus was the first persecuting enemy of God's 
church subdued and put out of the way. But we 
are not to infer from this that the Jewish people 
are finally rejected. As a persecuting power they 
no longer exist. 

But, as the Jews themselves are preserved in a 
wonderful manner, we believe, in accordance with 
prophecy, that, in the fullness of time, they are to 



Book With Seven Seals. 



5 



be restored to their original Holy Land, and their 
nationality will be restored, though not as a perse- 
cuting power, but as the very heart of Christianity 
itself in the Millennial Age. 

We now come to the opening of the seals. When 
the Lamb had opened the first seal, John saw a 
white horse, "and he that sat on him had a bow; 
and a crown was given unto him : and he went forth 
conquering and to conquer." This symbolizes the 
preaching of the gospel of peace, white being the 
emblem of love, peace, and good will. He that sat 
on the horse represents Christ and his apostles, and 
all w T ho succeed them as true ministers of the gos- 
pel. Conquering and to conquer denotes the con- 
tinuance, progress, and final success of the work as 
it reaches its consummation in the nineteenth 
chapter. The bow, as an instrument of war, shows 
that he wages war against the enemies of his king- 
dom. The crown signifies his kingly authority. 

The gospel, here symbolized by the white horse 
and its rider, was preached almost, if not quite, all 
over the then known world, before the fall of Jeru- 
salem. This reminds us of Matt. 24 :14. "And this 
gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the 
world for a witness unto all nations ; and then shall 
the end come." And this preaching of the word of 
God among men, though persecuted relentlessly by 
the rulers of both Jews and Gentiles, had a success 
in those early ages of the church, which is simply 
wonderful to contemplate. The whole world seemed 
to be filled with the new doctrine and its life-giving 
power and light. But the more it spread, and the 
more good it disseminated among the people, the 
more it was hated and persecuted by its enemies, 
among whom none were more bitter than the unbe- 
lieving Jews. 

The opening of the second seal reveals a red 



6 Lectures on Revelation. 

horse. And unto him who sat on it was given a 
great sword. Red denotes war, or bloodshed. This 
reminds us of what Jesus said in Matt. 24 :6 : "And 
ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars." The 
J ewish people had sinned so grievously and against 
so much light, that God had given them over to the 
power of all sorts of evil, and had left their long 
cherished Temple "desolate." So they were led by 
the evil one to organize rebellion after rebellion 
against their Roman masters, and thus bring upon 
themselves and their cities and country calamities 
so dreadful that it almost chills the blood to read 
of them even at this distant day. But these wars 
and rumors, here signified by the red horse, were 
only a part of the "beginning of sorrows," as stated 
in Matt. 24 :8, which sorrows were to culminate in 
the final fall of the city of Jerusalem. 

The third seal being opened shows a black horse. 
This denotes famine and pestilence, and is a fulfill- 
ment of Matt. 24:7: "And there shall be famines 
and pestilences." Black denotes sufferings and 
calamities of this kind. 

Famines were the result of wars and strifes 
among the people. These in turn hindered the peo- 
ple from their ordinary work in the fields, and 
caused food to become more and more scarce. Then 
the scarcity and the consequent unwholesomeness of 
food brought on pestilence. We in this favored land 
of plenty can't have an idea of the dreadful suf- 
fering which many of the Jewish people endured, 
especially in the besieged cities, when mothers are 
said to have cooked and eaten their own children. 

When the fourth seal was opened, a pale horse 
appeared on which was seated Death, riding through 
the stricken land, followed by Hades, or the grave, 
the place of the dead. Paleness is a fit emblem of 
death. Who has not seen the awful pallor of death 



Book With Seven Seals. 



7 



on the once fair and blooming face? How dreadful 
was the condition of the people when, on account 
of sickness and hunger, they were dying so fast that 
Death is represented as riding through the country 
followed by his sad and awful retinue! But the 
people had sinned deeply and grievously and were 
adding to their sin every day by persecuting the 
followers of Him whom they had crucified through 
malice and envy. 

The opening of the fifth seal revealed the souls 
of the martyrs under the altar in heaven, who were 
praying God to revenge their death on those who 
had murdered them. To them were given white 
robes and they were encouraged to wait a little 
season till their brethren, who were yet to be killed 
as they were, should join them. Their prayers were 
doubtless answered at the final fall of Jerusalem. 
But still this passage is closely connected with 
chapter 20 :4, where all the martyrs receive their 
reward. 

The opening of the sixth seal reveals the fall of 
Jerusalem under the most dreadful emblems imag- 
inable. Yet these emblems, or figures, are in strict 
conformity with other passages bearing on the 
same subject. For instance, Joel 2 :31 : "The sun 
shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into 
blood, before the great and terrible day of the 
Lord." Matt. 24 :29 : "Immediately after the trib- 
ulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, 
and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars 
shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the 
heaven shall be shaken." This last passage is 
shown to refer to the fall of Jerusalem by what is 
said in verse 34. "This generation shall not pass, 
till all these things be fulfilled." Mark 13 :24 and 
Luke 21 :25 give the same in substance. 

But if we could get a just conception of the 



s 



Lectures on Revelation. 



awful scenes that were transacted, the dreadful 
calamities the people endured, and realize the sit- 
uation, when the Roman army, after a long siege, 
finally broke down the walls, and rushed into the 
doomed city, almost packed with a starving and 
dying people, who had crowded into their beloved 
city in the vain hope that the God of Abraham and 
of David would yet protect them; and could we 
behold the sickening carnage that piled the streets 
with slaughtered men, women and children and 
caused gurgling streams of warm blood to flow 
over the once hallowed pavements of the Temple 
precints, and hear the shouts of the victors and 
the dying groans of the vanquished — we would con- 
clude that the emblems were not exaggerated, and 
that the picture was not overdrawn. 

Supplement to Lecture I. 

Some objection may be raised to my interpreting 
the sixth chapter as applying to the fall of Jerusa- 
lem, on the ground that the Book of Revelation 
was written after Jerusalem had fallen, and it 
could not on that account be a matter of prophecy 
when John wrote. I am aware that some twenty- 
six years had passed since the fall of J erusalem be- 
fore the Revelation was written according to the 
best chronology. Yet this need not be any objection 
to my plan of interpreting the book. For I take it 
to be a symbolic history of the true church of God, 
with its many conflicts with its enemies, from the 
very beginning of Christianity to its final consum- 
mation. And therefore, John, in writing it, was 
set back, so to speak, to the beginning, and saw it 
all in the vision, and wrote it all as still being fu- 
ture at the time of writing. 



LECTURE II. 



This Lecture covers chapters seven and eight. Read 
them carefully before reading the Lecture. 

The seventh chapter is a prelude to what fol- 
lows to the end of chapter eleven, which closes the 
second section of the book of Revelation, as out- 
lined in the Introduction. 

We are now to consider the downfall of the sec- 
ond enemy of Christianity in its order, namely, 
the Roman Empire. This empire, especially in 
its pagan state, was, for several centuries, a bitter 
enemy of the kingdom of God, and persecuted 
Christianity with all its vast power. It seems 
strange at first that )Rome should show such deadly 
hatred against the Christian religion, when it tol- 
erated and protected every form of idolatry in ex- 
istence. But the difficulty vanishes when we con- 
sider the fact, that the Evil One himself was the 
dominant moral as well as civil power in that 
mighty empire. 

This is shown by reference to Luke 4:6: "And 
the devil said unto him, All this power will I 
give unto thee and the glory of them : for that is 
delivered unto me ; and to whomsoever I will I give 
it" The devil here had shown Jesus in the temp- 
tation all the kingdoms of the world and the glory 
of them. Of course this was the Roman Empire, 
for that was called in those days the whole world. 
See Luke 2 : 1. "There went out a decree from 
Caesar Augustus, that all the ivorld should be 
taxed." Caesar Augustus was at that time Em- 
peror of Rome. And so, as all forms of idolatry 
are of the devil, it is not to be wondered at that 
he should be friendly to them, and persecute to the 
death the Christian religion, which was and is 
of God. 



10 Lectures on Revelation. 



But we are to look now to the symbolisms of the 
seventh chapter. But in order that the general 
reader may comprehend it all, we will have to pre- 
pare the way by giving certain historical facts. 
That part of the Roman Empire with which we are 
now concerned, covered all that part of southern 
and western Europe south of the Danube and west 
of the Rhine rivers, Beyond those rivers in the 
northern and eastern parts of Europe lived many 
nomadic tribes of people, whom the Romans called 
barbarians. These people were in the habit of 
roving about from place to place with their flocks 
and herds, wherever they could find pasture for 
their cattle or plunder for themselves, They had 
learned that in the more civilized provinces of 
southern Europe, where the people had cities and 
fields and vineyards, there were riches, that seemed 
wonderful to them, and which excited their cu- 
pidity. So they would attempt to make raids into 
those rich countries, now and then, to see and to 
enjoy better things than were to be had in their 
own country. But as long as the Roman people 
were virtuous and patriotic, they easily kept back 
these inroads of the barbarians by their well dis- 
ciplined armies. But after Rome had become im- 
mensely rich she began to grow corrupt morally 
and weak civilly. And so the time soon came 
when she could not defend her vast boundaries 
against the many encroachments of these active 
warriors of the hardy North. 

And the time had now about come when it pleased 
the God of heaven to destroy this mighty empire, 
which had so long imbrued its hands in the blood of 
the martyrs of Jesus. But before these dreadful 
invasions of the empire should begin, which were 
to devastate all southern Europe and apparently 
blot out civilization and Christianity, and thus 
bring on the Dark Ages, which were to enshroud 



Seventh Seal Opened. 



11 



Europe for a thousand years in a pall of intellec- 
tual and religious darkness, God is represented as 
wishing to seal his elect both of Jews and Gentiles, 
so that the true church should not become extinct 
during these trying times. 

Then John heard the number of those who were 
sealed of Israel, and it was a hundred and forty 
and four thousand. This is of course a definite 
for a large indefinite number. And it shows that 
there was even then a remnant of the dispersed 
Jewish people who should be saved. And this has 
been the case ever since, even to this present time, 
and will be till the times of the Gentiles are ful- 
filled, when all Israel will be saved, in the Millen- 
nial Age. Then John saw a great multitude, which 
no man could number, of all nations and kindreds 
and tongues, which were to be saved during all 
these tumultuous times, Avhen the church was in 
the wilderness, and when the Eed Dragon and the 
Beast (see twelfth and thirteenth chapters) seemed 
to have everything their own way. Here is a ful- 
fillment of the words of Christ in Matt. 16 :18, 
"And upon this rock I will build my church, and 
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 

The seventh chapter closes with a general dis- 
play of those who were sealed and saved during 
the darkest ages of the world's history. They were 
said to be those who had come out of great tribu- 
lation, and had washed their robes and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb. They were 
clothed with white robes and had palms in their 
hands. Also John saw in this goodly company the 
living creatures and the elders, and vast multitudes 
of the holy angels, and they were all praising and 
adoring God the Father and the Lamb. 

In the eighth chapter we have the opening of the 
seventh seal, and the beginning of the sounding of 
the seven trumpets. The terrible symbolisms in 



12 



Lectures on Revelation. 



this chapter display, in figurative language, the de- 
struction of the Roman Empire in Europe and 
Africa, which event began about 250 A. D., and 
continued till 476 A. D., when the Western, or 
Latin Empire, became extinct. The barbarians 
then, who had conquered all the countries, divided 
the old empire into several different states or 
kingdoms pretty much as it is now. But we will 
have more on this point later on. 

When the seventh seal was opened, it is said 
there was silence in heaven for half an hour, or a 
little season. I take this silence to refer to that 
period of the history of the empire which is known 
as the age of the Antonines. This period began 
about 138 A. D., soon after the final downfall of 
the Jewish nation, and lasted some less than a cen- 
tury. During this period the empire was governed 
by four or five good and virtuous emperors, two of 
whom bore the name of Antoninus. This may be 
termed the golden age of the empire, in which it 
reached its zenith of power and glory. During this 
age there was, so to speak, a lull in the general 
strife and turmoil that had characterized the years 
preceding, and Rome, under the sway of these rul- 
ers, was so strong that the barbarians, though im- 
patient under the restraint, were not able to make 
any headway against her. But after these virtu- 
ous rulers had passed away, there arose a series of 
the worst and most corrupt emperors that ever 
cursed any people or nation, and, as a natural con- 
sequence, the government became so corrupt in all 
departments through luxury and voluptuousness, 
that the nation as a whole began to grow enervated 
and weakened. Thus the way was opened for the 
speedy fall of the empire through the inroads of 
the impatient barbarians, who were growing 
stronger in proportion as the Romans were grow- 
ing weaker. 



Seventh Seal Opened. 



13 



The general confusions and upheavings of these 
unsettled times are symbolized by the casting 
down of the censer to the earth by the angel, which 
caused, as it is said, voices, thunderings, light- 
nings, and an earthquake. These were premoni- 
tions of the coming storm which was to sweep over 
these devoted countries, carrying destruction and 
death in their pathway. In this censer we find 
again the prayers of saints, showing the power of 
the supplications of God's people in His general 
providences among men. 

After the opening of this seventh seal, John saw 
the seven angels with seven trumpets, with which 
they were to sound the ushering in of the mighty 
invasions of the northern barbarians with all their 
dire consequences. The first trumpet being 
sounded, there follows a storm of hail and fire and 
blood. These affect the earth, or the land in gen- 
eral. The second trumpet reveals a great moun- 
tain burning with fire which was cast into the sea, 
and the third part of the sea w r as said to become 
blood. This trumpet, then, affects the sea. The 
third trumpet ushers in a star falling from heaven 
upon the rivers and fountains of water. This, 
then, was said to affect the streams and springs of 
water with the bitterness of wormwood. The 
fourth trumpet was said to have smitten the sun, 
moon and stars of heaven, so that they lost a third 
part of their light. Notice how similar these 
things are to the opening of the seals in the sixth 
chapter, and the pouring out of the vials in the 
sixteenth chapter. The sounding of these four 
trumpets, then, shows the universality of the 
calamities that fell upon those distressed coun- 
tries. One is said to bring a curse upon the land, 
one upon the sea, one upon the streams and foun- 
tains of water, and one upon the heavenly bodies, 
denoting universality of destruction. 



14 



Lectures on Revelation. 



If I could I would give the reader an adequate 
conception of the dire ruin that was brought upon 
the people and countries of Southern Europe by 
these cruel and uncivilized barbarians of the 
North, who took great pleasure in plunder, murder 
and general devastation. Remember, these dis- 
tressing times lasted something like two hundred 
years. The country, before these trying times, was 
populous. Cities, towns and villages filled many 
portions of the country. Beautiful farms and 
vineyards dotted the country along the many pub- 
lic highways. Civilization had reached a high de- 
gree for that age of the world of mankind. 
Churches and schools were numerous, and the peo- 
ple generally were comparatively prosperous and 
happy in their home life. But at the close of this 
period what a sad and desolate prospect greets the 
eye! The original inhabitants in a large measure 
were destroyed by war, famine and pestilence; the 
few remaining ones reduced to poverty and slav- 
ery; the country filled with the rough and unfeel- 
ing conquerors, who had no pity for the poor, dis- 
tressed people; the cities, towns, villages and 
homes of a once happy people now in a large meas- 
ure reduced to heaps of ruins. The bones of those 
who had been slaughtered or who had died from 
famine lay scattered all through the country. The 
schools were extinct, the churches pillaged, dese- 
crated or burned. Dire ruin seemed to prevail 
everywhere. A traveler who passed through the 
northern part of Africa (for that, too, was a part 
of the Roman Empire, and was likewise invaded 
by these same barbarous people, who crossed over 
the Straits of Gibraltar) said that he traveled a 
whole day through that once populous country 
without seeing a single human being. 



Seventh Seal Opened. 



15 



The result of the fourth trumpet was especially 
significant. It was said to smite the sun, moon 
and stars, so that the light was in part destroyed. 
Intellectually and morally this was truly the case, 
for these calamities, here so symbolized, did really 
bring on the Dark Ages, during which time the 
people groped in abject darkness both moral and 
intellectual ; and this was made worse by the gross 
superstition that began about this time to be fas- 
tened on the people by their ignorant and wicked 
religious teachers. For in this period of mental 
darkness, when the people were ready to hear and 
believe anything strange or supernatural, it was 
the fittest time in the world's history for the "man 
of sin" to rise up and gain universal power over 
the minds and lives of men. But more of this 
later on. 



LECTURE III. 



This Lecture covers chapters nine, ten and eleven. 
Bead them carefully and compare the Lecture 
with them. 

As the second lecture pertained to the fall of the 
Western, or Latin, Empire, this has special refer- 
ence to the final destruction of the Eastern, or 
Greek, Empire. 

About the year 364 A. D., the once mighty Em- 
pire of Rome was divided into two parts, known 
afterwards as the Western and the Eastern em- 
pires. The former covered most of Southern Eu- 
rope, except the Greek peninsula and Northern 
Africa, with the old city of Rome as its capital. 
The latter contained Southeastern Europe and all 
the Asiatic provinces of the old empire, and had 
Constantinople for its capital city. 

The first of these was, as we have seen in Lec- 
ture two, finally destroyed about the year 476 
A. D. But the latter continued to stand till 1453, 
when it, too, was blotted out of existence by the 
capture of Constantinople by the Turks. 

It will be seen that the trumpets, under the sev- 
enth seal, cover the period during which God in 
His providence was bringing about the final ruin 
of the old Roman Empire, in its entirety, which, as 
we have seen, was the second deadly enemy which 
the church of Christ was to encounter. 

The symbols in chapter nine give, in figurative 
language, a brief history of this period down to the 
year 1453. The tenth and eleventh chapters per- 
tain to that period of the church's history from 
1453 to the ushering in of the Millennial Age. But 
this last period is more graphically and more fully 
given later on, in chapters sixteen to nineteen in- 
clusive. We are now living under the sixth trum- 



The Bottomless Pit. 



IT 



pet of the seventh seal, if my interpretation is cor- 
rect. 

The ninth chapter opens with the fifth trumpet, 
and reveals a star falling from heaven, and to him 
was given the key of the bottomless pit. And 
when he had opened the pit, a dreadful smoke 
arose from it, and the sun and the air were dark- 
ened by reason of the smoke. And locusts were 
represented as coming out of the smoke upon the 
earth. 

Now, this awful symbolism refers to the rise of 
the Mohammedan Empire in the East, which was 
at last the means of the downfall of the Eastern 
Roman Empire. The bottomless pit here means 
the vast, immeasurable source of all evil. Its be- 
ing opened by permission from heaven shows that 
it was God's will, according to His eternal pur- 
poses, that this dreadful something should come 
upon the earth and fulfill its mission and then go 
into perdition. 

It will be w^ell to give here a short history of the 
rise and progress of this new empire, and new reli- 
gion which it inculcated. 

About the year 600 A. D. there appeared in Ara- 
bia a man by the name of Mohammed, who claimed 
to be a prophet, and who began to teach a sort of 
fanatical religious doctrine, though at first with 
small success. This new religion was made up of 
fragments of Judaism, Paganism, and Christian- 
ity, with a large mixture of pure diabolic imagina- 
tion. At first he lived in Mecca, a city in Arabia, 
where he was born, in 570 A. D. But when he be- 
came over-persistent in trying to propagate his re- 
ligious views, his townspeople became tired and 
disgusted, and so expelled him from the city. He 
then went to Medina, another citv of Arabia. Here 
he had better success than at Mecca, and in about 
2 



18 



Lectures on Revelation. 



two years returned to the latter city as a warrior 
at the head of 300 of his followers, and defeated an 
army of 950 Meccans. This he took to be a special 
sign that God was on his side, and thus fastened 
his religious views upon them at the point of the 
sword. In a few more years he was virtually king 
over all Arabia, and at the head of a victorious and 
fanatical army that soon became the terror of all 
the East, The chief tenet of his new religion was 
to propagate his faith by the sword. In verse 
ten it is said that he was to continue five months. 
This reduced to days is 150 days, or prophetical 
years. And sure enough, in about 150 years this 
new, self-made prophet and his successors, who 
took the name of Saracens, had overrun Syria, 
Persia, all the Holy Land, Egypt, all Northern 
Africa, and, in 710, landed in Spain, across the 
Straits of Gibraltar, and soon became masters of 
that also. It seemed then that all Southern Europe 
was doomed to be conquered by these terrible fa- 
natics. But God said : "Thus far but no farther/' 
and as soon as they had crossed the Pyrenees they 
were met at Poictiers by Charles Martel at the 
head of the Franks, and so awfully defeated that 
they were glad to get back into Spain again. This 
was the end of their career of conquest. 

These armies of the Saracens were represented 
as locusts. This is a strong figure, as in the East 
nothing can be more dreadful than an army of lo- 
custs, which darken the sun in their flight, and 
cover the earth, and devour every green thing, so 
that it seems that a fire has burned up everything 
that grows on the land. But these armies, under 
the name of locusts, were not to hurt the grass or 
any green thing, but only the people. That is, they 
were not to destroy the countries which they con- 
quered, as the barbarians had done in Europe, but 
torment the people by subjecting them to tyran- 



The Bottomless Pit. 



19 



nical civil treatment, and dreadful outrages, and, 
worst of all, compelling them to embrace their 
faith and system of religion by force. They were 
said to torment the people like scorpions. This is 
significant. The sting of the well-known eastern 
scorpion rarely ever kills, but it causes great pain, 
without either swelling or inflammation. So these 
Saracen armies made little or no change in the gen- 
eral aspect of things, but inflicted untold pain and 
grief of mind by compelling the people to submit 
to their demands, so that many doubtless felt like 
they would rather die than live. 

Then the shapes of the locusts, or warriors, were 
said to be like horses prepared unto battle. That 
shows their armies to have been mostly cavalry, 
which was a fact. On their heads were apparently 
crowns of gold. This denoted the yellow turbans 
they wore on their heads. They had hair as 
women. History teaches that those Arabian war- 
riors wore long hair. Lions' teeth denotes their 
tremendous power to frighten, devour and destroy 
whatever they chose. The breastplates denote 
their powerful armor and shields. Their wings 
represent their flowing robes fluttering and rus- 
tling as these horsemen rushed through the coun- 
try or into battle. Their tails with stings refer to 
the dreadful consequences they left, so to speak, 
behind them in the countries which they conquered. 
The truth of this is yet seen in all those countries 
which they subdued, and upon which they fastened 
their baleful superstition known as Mohammedan- 
ism. The king over them is plainly the devil him- 
self, who was permitted to be the leader of those 
terrible armies and the real author of that worst 
of all forms of false religion, which is even now 
fastened upon 250 millions of people on earth, and 
which is the bitterest enemv that the Christian 



20 Lectures on Revelation. 



church has ever encountered, and is destined to be 
the most stubborn to overcome. 

Thus we see that the Arabians, or Saracens, con- 
quered nearly all the Eastern Empire in Asia, ex- 
cept a part of Asia Minor. And now we come to 
the sounding of the sixth trumpet, which brings 
to view another terrible scourge that seems to have 
swept down from central Asia around to the Cas- 
pian Sea and across the head waters of the Eu- 
phrates River. 

This brings to our notice the invasions of the 
Tartars, Moguls, or Turks, who from the ninth to 
the fifteen centuries, made frequent invasions from 
Central and Western Asia into Southern Asia and 
Southeastern Europe, and carried consternation 
and terror into all those countries. These finally 
conquered Asia Minor and a large part of the Sar- 
acen Empire, and at last, in 1453, took Constan- 
tinople, the capital of the old Eastern Empire, and 
put an end to the last remnant of this second per- 
secuting enemy of the church of God. They also 
adopted the Mohammedan faith as their religion, 
as the barbarians in Europe had adopted the Chris- 
tian religion as their own. However, the Christian 
religion which the barbarians accepted was, as will 
be seen later, that corrupt form known as popery. 

We now come to the symbolisms of this last part 
of the ninth chapter. The angel which had sounded 
the trumpet was told to loose the four angels 
which were bound in the river Euphrates. The 
great Euphrates River had for ages been the east- 
ern boundary of the Roman Empire. These four 
angels bound in the river represent the enemies of 
the empire, who were appointed, at a moment's no- 
tice, to destroy it when the time should come. So 
they here really denote the Turks who, as soon as 
permitted, rush across the boundaries and soon 
carry terror and destruction into those once rich 



The Bottomless Pit. 



21 



countries, and carry a blight with them that still 
curses all those fair regions where the seven 
churches of Asia were located. I suppose their 
candles had all been removed on account of their 
corrupt doctrines and practices. And John said 
he saw the army of these terrible warriors who car- 
ried death and destruction to a large part of the 
people and the country, and it numbered two mil- 
lions of horsemen. The awful imagery here de- 
picted of breastplates of fire, jacinth, and brim- 
stone, and of horses with heads of lions, out of 
whose mouths issued fire, smoke, and brimstone, 
by which a third part of the people were said to be 
killed, denotes that the terrors and sufferings of 
these stricken countries were fearful to contem- 
plate. And it is further said that their power was 
in their mouths and their tails ; and that their tails 
were like unto serpents, and had heads, with which 
they do hurt. These symbols remind us of the 
scorpions under the fifth trumpet, only they are 
more dreadful in their effects. For the suffering 
and distress, moral, social and civil, brought on 
the countries under Turkish rule were a great deal 
worse than anything the Saracens ever forced on 
any people, though that was bad, indeed. 

This brings us to the final downfall of the Roman 
Empire. And yet it is said that the rest of the men 
who were not killed did not repent and turn away 
from their sinful ways. This signifies that the 
time of the coming of the kingdom of heaven, when 
the saints are to possess the earth, was not yet 
come. 

We now come to the tenth chapter, which, with 
the eleventh, covers the period of the church's his- 
tory from the fall of the Roman Empire to the be- 
ginning of the Millennial period. 

The Dark Ages of the world's history, in which 
the nations of Europe especially were sunk in 



22 



Lectures on Revelation. 



gross darkness morally, civilly, politically, so- 
cially and religiously, lasted from about 500 A. D. 
till 1500 A. D. At the end of this period, or, as 
some have it, a little sooner, was the beginning of 
the Renaissance, or the revival of learning. This 
was brought about by several causes, the chief of 
which were : The intermingling of the people of 
Europe with those of the East during the age of 
the Crusades ; the invention of the art of printing, 
by which books could be so multiplied as to enable 
all people to have them; and the capture of Con- 
stantinople by the Turks, when all the learned 
people of that ancient city left it under such dread- 
ful conditions, and fled to the other parts of Eu- 
rope where the Turks had no access. By these 
means light began to dawn on the minds of the 
people, and they were led by slow degrees to in- 
quire after and seek more and more light along all 
lines, till at last the stirring events of the Refor- 
mation burst upon central Europe, the results of 
which, religious, social and civil, are still in prog- 
ress with ever-increasing power and momentum, 
and will be till the sounding of the seventh trum- 
pet, when the kingdoms of this world are to be- 
come the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. 

In the beginning of chapter ten a mighty angel 
comes down from heaven clothed with a cloud and 
a rainbow upon his head, having a face like the 
sun and feet as pillars of fire. He had a little book 
open in his hand, and he placed his right foot on 
the sea and his left foot on the land and, with a 
voice like that of a lion roaring, swore by him that 
liveth forever and ever, that time should be no 
more. But that in the days of the voice of the 
seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the 
mystery of God should be finished, as he had de- 
clared through his prophets. 



The Bottomless Pit. 



23 



This mighty angel, with his surroundings and 
accompaniments, seems to signify the blessed light 
that had now come upon the earth to stay and to 
grow brighter and brighter unto the perfect day 
of the world's glorious peace and happiness, For 
in this age, of which we are now writing, and 
which has been going on, already, according to our 
interpretation for several centuries, the light of 
God's truth in the Bible began to grow and spread 
among the people. And likewise a general knowl- 
edge of better things for the good of mankind be- 
gan to be diffused gradually among all classes of 
people, which has within the past two centuries 
done so much for the amelioration of those nations 
in Europe and America which have been brought 
under its pow T er. And this light and knowledge 
are spreading with ever-increasing power and ra- 
pidity to all the other nations of the world. The 
final outcome of all this is to be a Christian civili- 
zation, with Christian education, civil and reli- 
gious liberty, and a complete brotherhood of man- 
kind. Then the world will be prepared for the 
final coming of the kingdom, when, as Daniel says, 
7 :27 : "The kingdom and dominion, and all the 
greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven 
shall be given to the people of the saints of the 
most high, whose kingdom is an everlasting king- 
dom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." 
And then the "knowledge of God shall cover the 
earth as the waters cover the sea," 

The expression "time shall be no longer" does 
not mean that time shall end then, but that there 
will be no more time of waiting or delay. For, as 
we know, the good time here spoken of had been 
promised for many centuries, and it seemed that 
the time was delayed so long, while the enemies of 
the church and of all good seemed to continue to 
prevail, that God's people were often in their dis- 



24 



Lectures on Revelation. 



tresses discouraged and disheartened. But now 
this angel comes to renew their courage and their 
faith, and to enable them to feel like the time of 
the coming of the kingdom was almost in sight. 

John is now commanded to take the little book 
in the hand of the angel and eat it up. He did 
so, and, as he was told, it was sweet in the eating 
but bitter as to the result. And he was told that 
he must prophesy again to many peoples, nations, 
tongues and kings. The sweetness and bitterness 
of the book have reference to the preaching of the 
gospel to all the world by John and his successors 
through all ages till the end of this period. The 
sweetness was to show that there was always to be 
a pleasure in preaching the gospel of salvation to 
the people. But the bitterness denoted that those 
who thus preached for the saving of the people 
were to be frequently subjected to great sufferings 
and perhaps death itself. 

This brings us to the eleventh chapter, in which 
this same mighty angel who had the book and 
stood on sea and land, told John to measure the 
temple and the altar, and them that worship there- 
in. This temple seems to denote the church in this 
period, especially in those countries where the 
preaching of the gospel is opposed, as it generally 
always is, when first introduced. The church here 
is represented as being small — so small as to be 
measured as a temple. But the court was not to 
be measured, as it was to be in the hands of the 
gentiles, or the opposition, and the holy city was 
to be trodden under foot for forty and two months. 
All this seems to refer especially to that part of the 
world which is now and has been for a long time 
under the sway of the cruel Mohammedans, who 
hate Christianity with a deadly hatred. The two 
witnesses must signify the written word and the 
preached word. For these are the two means by 



The Bottomless Pit. 



25 



which the gospel is always introduced and propa- 
gated. These were to prophesy or teach in sack- 
cloth for 1260 days or years, the same as the forty 
and two months, during which time the holy city 
was to be trodden under foot. The sackcloth and 
ashes denote the cruel persecution to which they 
were subjected. These witnesses are here called 
the two olive trees, which is a plain reference to 
Zach. 4 :3, where an olive tree is represented as fur- 
nishing oil to keep a lamp burning. And this fig- 
ure, though simple and weak apparently, was to 
teach the mighty power that God had bestowed 
upon Zerubbabel to build the second temple, 
though opposed by seemingly overwhelming forces. 
And thus these witnesses, which seem weak and in- 
significant, are here, as elsewiiere, the power of 
God unto the salvation of men and nations. And 
there is no power or opposition, how mighty soever 
it may appear to be, that can hinder the onward 
march of the white horse and his rider, or snatch 
the victory from his hands. The wonderful things 
here ascribed to the witnesses, of destroying their 
enemies by fire, and of having power to shut 
heaven, that it rain not, and of having power to 
turn waters into blood, and of bringing plagues 
upon people and nations, all plainly refer to the 
things done by Elijah and Moses through the 
power of God. And they here mean that the 
prayers of the righteous avail much, and that God 
will always interfere whenever it is for his glory 
and for the best interests of his church. 

Now, in order to get a right understanding of 
that part of this eleventh chapter, where we are 
told that the witnesses were persecuted and killed 
when their work was finished, and that they lay 
unburied for three days and a half, while their 
enemies were rejoicing, and that they then rose 
and ascended to heaven, we must get a right view 



26 



Lectures on Revelation. 



of certain terras used. The forty and two months 
of witnessing, the 1260 days, or years, in which the 
gentiles were treading the holy city under foot, and 
the three days and a half when the witnesses lay 
unburied, a day standing for a year, all mean the 
same period of time. And we must remember that 
this 1260 days is a favorite period of time in Dan- 
iel as well as in Revelation, and that it does not 
always designate the very same time in the history 
of human events, but that it is rather an indefinite 
number of years, during which any particular per- 
secution or trouble against the church was to last. 
Now it is said the beast, which is clearly the devil 
working through his various agents, as popery, 
Mohammedanism, idolatry, and other evil things, 
was to make war on the witnesses and kill them, 
when their work was finished. Well, this must be 
understood of each one of the martyrs who was put 
to death in all these times of persecution, after his 
individual work was finished. For we all ought to 
know that God's servants can never die in any way 
till their work is ended. And the lying unburied 
all this time is not to be taken literally, but denotes 
that their memory was dishonored and cast out as 
vile, which in ancient times was signified by want 
of burial. And the rejoicing of their persecutors 
and murderers plainly shows the attitude of the 
enemies of the church of God in all ages. And this 
is still really going on in some parts of the world 
even in this comparatively enlightened age. For, 
in many heathen, Catholic and Mohammedan 
lands, missionaries are now and then put to death. 
And this will doubtless be the case to some extent 
till all enemies are finally put down, as is indi- 
cated in the thirteenth verse of this chapter, and 
again in the closing verses of the nineteenth chap- 
ter. And this event is plainly referred to when we 
are told that the Spirit of life from God entered 



The Bottomless Pit. 



27 



into the witnesses and they lived again. This is 
more fully stated in the opening verses of the twen- 
tieth chapter, where we are told that the martyrs 
lived again. But this will be explained in the 
proper place. So we have now come to the closing 
scenes of this second section of the book of Revela- 
tion, in which the period of warfare between the 
church and its enemies of all kinds is drawing to a 
close. The rider on the white horse, who is now T 
denominated King of kings and Lord of Lords, and 
who has a sharp sword with which he is to smite 
the nations ( see 19 :11-17 ) is preparing for the 
last final charge. The result of that charge is de- 
picted in verse 13. "And the same hour there was 
a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city 
fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven 
thousand; and the remnant were affrighted and 
gave glory to the God of heaven." 

The seventh and last trumpet now sounds and 
the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms 
of God and his Christ. Then follows a scene of re- 
joicing and praising God for his wonderful works, 
and for his taking to himself his great power and 
reigning over all his enemies and rewarding all 
his faithful servants. 



LECTURE IV. 



This will cover the twelfth and thirteenth chapters. 

We now reach the third section of the book of 
Revelation. This section gives a symbolic history 
of the church in its contests with its ecclesiastical 
or spiritual enemies, instead of its civil enemies, as 
in the one just finished. It also takes us back 
again to the beginning of Christianity. 

John saw a great wonder in heaven. A woman 
appeared clothed with the sun, and the moon un- 
der her feet, and a crown of twelve stars upon her 
head. This woman symbolizes the kingdom of 
heaven, or the true church of Jesus Christ. Being 
clothed with the sun shows that she stood for the 
Sun of Righteousness, or the spiritual light of the 
world. The moon under her feet denotes that she 
is to be the greatest of all lights spiritual, as the 
sun in heaven is, to our world, the great light over- 
ruling all others. The twelve stars seem to sym- 
bolize the twelve apostles and their successors as 
her helpers and workers to the end of her earthly 
career. The man child that was born, who was to 
rule all nations with a rod of iron, is Jesus the 
Christ, who will in his own good time become King 
of kings. To rule with a rod of iron denotes 
strength, as iron is the strongest of all substances. 
The red dragon is none other than Satan, the great 
enemy of God and of all good. He appears here 
first as a dragon and a red dragon. The word 
dragon has always, and in all languages, conveyed 
the idea of a terrible and unnatural monster, which 
is frightful to behold. And as a red dragon it de- 
notes Satan, as personified in the pagan Roman 
government. Red was the color of the clothing of 
the high officials, and this is still handed down to 
our day in some parts of the clothing of the high 



The Red Dragon. 



29 



ecclesiastics in the Roman Catholic church. This 
dragon was said to have seven heads and ten horns, 
and seven crowns upon his heads. These seven 
heads are explained in chapter 17 :9 as signifying 
the seven hills on which Rome, the seat of the 
dragon's power, is built. The ten horns are also 
in 17 :12, said to mean the ten kingdoms into which 
the Roman Empire in Europe was divided by the 
barbarians. The crowns upon his head seem to 
denote his full regal power over all the earth. And 
it is said that his tail drew the third part of the 
stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth. 
This I take to refer not only to the great and 
wicked work which Satan was represented here as 
doing, but also to his original state and fall. For 
it is certain that the devil and his evil angels were 
not created in their present fallen and wicked 
state. This would be inconsistent with the charac- 
ter and attributes of God who is supremely good, 
and it would also be contrarv to the teachings of 
the Scriptures in many places, especially in Jude 
6, which says: "And the angels which kept not 
their first estate, but left their own habitation, he 
hath reserved in everlasting chains of darkness 
unto the judgment of the great day." And the war- 
fare here spoken of between Michael and Satan 
doubtless has reference to the same sad events. 
But all this in the twelfth chapter may be inter- 
preted in another manner, as follows : Michael 
here is one of the faithful archangels and repre- 
sents the power of good; Satan is a fallen arch- 
angel and represents evil. These two forces are 
here said to have waged a dreadful war in which 
Michael and his angels fought and the dragon and 
his angels fought in a battlefield unseen by mortal 
men, in which the victory was plainly on the side 
of the good. Did not something like this take 
place in the wilderness near the Dead Sea on a 



30 



Lectures on Revelation. 



certain occasion? The object of this battle was 
to see which should finally hold the supremacy 
of this world of mankind — God or Satan. The 
conflict was brief but terrible, and we have the 
certain promise of the happy result at "the end of 
the days." Dan. 12 :13. But it is God's will that 
Satan and his angels shall be permitted to carry on 
his evil practices for a season. But he knows his 
time is short, and his wrath is proportionately 
great. 

The newborn child was caught up to heaven 
unto God and his throne. The woman fled into the 
wilderness, where she had a place prepared of God, 
that she should be nourished a thousand two hun- 
dred and three score days. The dragon or Satan 
tried to destroy the plan of salvation in the early 
stages of its existence among men. The death of 
our Saviour was planned and attempted by Herod, 
one of Satan's agents. After his baptism the whole 
scheme of redemption hung upon the issue of the 
temptations in the wilderness. The next attempt 
was to destroy his life during his ministry among 
the people. This was finally accomplished through 
the betraval of Judas and the weakness of Pilate. 
But all this only fulfilled the Scriptures, and was 
one important step in the plan of redemption. 
After his death Satan tried to keep him dead and 
buried. But Roman guards and Satan's power are 
alike impotent to thwart the purposes and plans of 
God. After his resurrection and ascension, then 
an effort was made through the Jewish Council to 
destroy the infant church. But when they had all 
done their worst, the church was only dispersed, 
which was the best thing that could be done for its 
life, preservation, and propagation. Thus all 
efforts to destroy the church through the wicked 
Jewish nation failed. And then Satan, as the red 
dragon, or pagan Roman power, his agent, went to 



The Red Dragon. 



31 



work to destroy the woman, or the true church in 
the wilderness. The church in the wilderness de- 
notes its state or condition in those long ages of 
stern and cruel persecution. But, though pagan 
Borne did its best to crush out the church of Christ, 
it still grew and spread in every province through- 
out its vast dominions. And though thousands 
were put to death in all sorts of cruel ways, the 
blood of the martyrs, as one has so well said, was 
the seed of the church. 

And it is said that the serpent or dragon cast 
out of his mouth water as a flood that the woman 
might be swallowed up and thus destroyed. Yet the 
earth helped the woman and swallowed up the 
flood which was intended to overwhelm the woman 
or the church of God. The flood of water here, 
which was said to proceed from the mouth of the 
dragon, signifies the false and corrupt doctrines 
which began to be propagated even before the 
death of the apostle John. These heretical teach- 
ings had their origin in the wicked one, and so were 
said to proceed from his mouth. They increased 
and spread more and more, until they finally be- 
came consolidated and incorporated into that 
awful system which has been known ever since as 
the Boman Catholic Church. Thus the devil hoped 
to destroy the true church by counterfeiting an- 
other which would swallow it up. But the earth 
helped the woman or the true church. This the 
earth, or the world of mankind, did by furnishing 
wicked men who took delight in corrupting the 
pure doctrines of Christianity and thus forming a 
church, as they called it, which would, as they 
vainly hoped, save them in their sins instead of 
from their sins. But this was only a sifting or sep- 
arating of the wheat from the chaff. For the true 
Christians, who had been sealed, as we saw in a 
former chapter, were thus separated from the false 



32 



Lectures on Revelation. 



professors thereof; and they henceforth consti- 
tuted the true church or woman in the wilderness, 
which was, all through the Dark Ages, persecuted 
by its wicked rival. And again the earth helped 
the woman by furnishing places of safety for true 
Christians, all through these dreadful times, in the 
fastnesses of her mountains and in her secluded 
valleys. 

Thus the red dragon failed in his every effort to 
put down Christianity, under the Jewish rulers 
and under the pagan Roman Empire. And now we 
come to that time, which has been hinted at above, 
in which the devil as the red dragon, gave place to 
a terrible beast, and surrendered unto him his seat 
and his power especially to persecute the woman. 

The beast that rose up out of the sea, in the thir- 
teenth chapter, surely symbolizes the rise and con- 
tinuance of that dreadful organization which was 
destined to curse the nations of mankind for so 
many ages. This is what Paul called the "man of 
sin," or "the son of perdition." And he said again 
that he could not come till he that let or hindered 
should be taken out of the way. II Thes. 2 :7. The 
one letting, or hindering here, was the pagan Ro- 
man Empire. For it was impossible to establish 
a false, worldly church while pagan Rome was a 
persecuting power against everything called Chris- 
tian, because people would not belong to an organ- 
ization that subjected them to persecution and 
death, unless moved by a principle stronger than 
death; and this pure principle of loving obedience 
to God none can give but the Spirit of God in 
Christ Jesus himself. But when these false doc- 
trines had made great headway among the people, 
it so turned out that a great emperor of pagan 
Rome, himself a pagan, suddenly declared himself 
an adherent of the Christian religion, and put 
down all pagan or idol worship; and this, of 



The Red Dragon. 



33 



course, made Christianity popular, especially 
among the upper classes of society, and soon a cor- 
rupt system grew up to suit the tastes and wishes 
of unregenerate and worldly men. And this was 
the rise of popery. 

So, in the thirteenth chapter, a beast rose up out 
of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and 
upon his horns ten crowns. And this beast was 
like a leopard, having the feet of a bear, and his 
mouth was the mouth of a lion. And the red 
dragon gave him his power, his seat, and his great 
authority. 

This beast is a symbolism of the Roman Catholic 
Church. The red dragon, or the devil, in the pagan 
Roman Empire, gave to this beast his power to per- 
secute the true church, and his seat of power, 
which was the city of Rome, and his great author- 
ity over men and nations. His being like a leopard 
and bear and lion, all in one, shows his character 
which was so exceedingly bad that it combined the 
cruelty of the leopard, the savagery of the bear, 
and the bloodthirstiness of the lion. His seven 
heads and ten horns are identical with those of the 
dragon in the twelfth chapter. But the crowns 
upon the horns show that he was to have supreme 
power over those ten kingdoms into which the 
old Roman Empire in Europe was divided by the 
conquering barbarians, which history shows was a 
fact for many centuries. And this beast, or papal 
Rome, had one thing which the dragon did not 
have, and that was the names (as it reads in the 
margin) of blasphemy. This plainly refers to the 
many titles and names which are assumed or ap- 
plied to the pope and to the church of Roane, or 
Roman Catholicism. Some of these may be here 
noted. The name pope originally means father. 
He claims to be the father to, or over, the church. 
3 



34 Lectures on Revelation. 

Jesus said: "Call no man father" in that sense. 
Then he is called the head of the church. The 
church has no head but Christ. Then he is said to 
be the vicar of Christ on earth. A vicar is one who 
takes the place of another and performs his duties 
or functions. How blasphemous to claim to be in 
Christ's place, and to be in possession of his power 
to act along certain lines ! He claims also power 
to forgive sins, which none can do but God only. 
Infallibility is another one of his claims, by which 
is meant that the pope, in speaking as the head of 
the chuich in regard to what should be believed or 
practiced, can not err. Thus he sets himself up as 
God, and is the very embodiment of blasphemy it- 
self. 

Let us pause here for a while and consider what 
it is that this beast represented and still represents 
— which is Roman Catholicism. It is what Paul 
called the "falling away," and the "man of sin," 
and the "son of perdition." And in this last book 
of the Bible it is called "the mother of harlots and 
abominations of the earth." As a system of religion 
it had the devil as its founder, and lies as its foun- 
dation. It is in no sense the church of Christ, but 
is a counterfeit pure and simple. There is no truth 
in the whole thing. It is a system of lies from 
start to finish. It claims to have the apostle Peter 
as its first bishop, and to possess the power of the 
keys and other things, as given in Matt. 16. But 
all this Scripture is grossly misrepresented and 
made to mean things the Saviour never had in mind 
at all when he spoke those words to Peter. The 
word Peter means rock ; and the Lord said on this 
rock, meaning Peter, he would build his church. 
But he meant not a real foundation, but an instru- 
mental foundation. And this was fulfilled when 
Peter first preached to the Jews on the day of Pen- 
tecost, and to the gentiles at the house of Corne- 



The Red Dragon. 



35 



lius, on which occasions Peter laid the foundation 
of the church of Christ for both Jews and gentiles. 
And when he said that he would give to him the 
keys of the kingdom of heaven, he meant that he 
(Peter) should be the first to open the kingdom 
of heaven to both Jews and gentiles, which was 
fulfilled on the occasions mentioned above. And 
then the Saviour said again that whatsoever Peter 
should bind on earth should be bound in heaven. 
But these same words were spoken to all the apos- 
tles on another occasion, and simply meant that 
he would so endue them by the Holy Spirit that 
in establishing his church on earth and in teach- 
ing his pure doctrines and ordinances, they should 
not make any mistakes. This is what is meant 
by the inspiration of the Spirit in writing for us 
the New Testament as it came down to us. The 
pope, however, claims to have that same inspira- 
tion yet along these same lines. 

But so far as the church in Rome is concerned, 
Peter never had anything to do with it. The 
Catholics say that he was its first bishop or pas- 
tor. But the truth is, so far as the evidence goes, 
Peter never saw Rome at all, and so had no con- 
nection with the matter. All these claims con- 
cerning the Apostle Peter are pure fiction and 
nothing else. 

But we now return to the beast, of whom it is 
said in verse three, that one of his heads was 
wounded as it were to death, but that it was after- 
wards healed, and that all the world wondered 
after the beast. 

This verse has caused much perplexity and given 
rise to many speculations and interpretations. 
The one, however, wilich the author of these Lec- 
tures assumes to be the true one, is both simple 
and natural. We have already seen in a former 
Lecture that the barbarians who conquered the 



36 Lectures on Revelation. 



Roman Empire in Europe were heathen, and it 
looked like the whole of Christianity, root and 
branch, would be blotted out of existence. But 
strange to say, after reducing the people to the 
most abject state of vassalage, they then accepted 
the religion of the conquered people. So my in- 
terpretation is this : The deadly wound had refer- 
ence to the low estate of the dominant church in 
those countries at that time, which was Romanism, 
and the healing was the conversion of the barba- 
rians themselves. And all the world wondered 
after the beast. After the conversion of the bar- 
barians to that form of Christianity which they 
found, namely, Romanism, they became devoted 
followers of the pope, and were strictly obedient 
to all his demands. So that made the way easy 
for the pope to fasten on the new kingdoms, which 
they set up, all the chains of ecclesiastical slavery 
and superstition that cursed those nations so long, 
and from whose galling bonds many of them have 
not yet recovered. And it is said they worshiped 
the dragon which gave power to the beast, and they 
worshiped the beast. Yes, they worshiped any- 
thing but God. For Catholicism is idolatry pure 
and simple. With all their pomp and ceremony 
their worship is the worst form of idolatry. And 
there was given him a mouth speaking great things 
and blasphemies, and he was to continue forty and 
two months, or 1260 years. These great things 
and blasphemies signify the monstrous things the 
people were taught and led to believe and trust in. 
The pope taught them that he was in God's place, 
and had power over men's souls and bodies in time 
and in eternity. So he opened his mouth against 
God to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle and 
them which dwell therein. And now comes the 
most awful thing of all. Power was given unto 
him to make war with the saints, that is, the 



The Red Dragon. 



37 



woman in the wilderness or the true church of 
God, and to overcome them. And it is a fact that 
this organization, which professed to be the church 
of Jesus Christ, killed more of his true followers 
than pagan Rome itself. 

But finally it is said of this beast that he that 
killeth with the sword shall be killed with the 
sword, and he that leadeth into captivity shall go 
into captivity. So the beast will at last be com- 
pelled to go into perdition. This is to be accom- 
plished by the faith and the patience of the saints, 
or the true church. 

We now come to the second beast which was 
said to rise out of the earth, and had two horns like 
a lamb, but spake as a dragon. The first beast 
rose out of the sea. The word sea here means 
nations and peoples. For Catholicism rose from 
the corrupt doctrines that had been disseminated 
generally among the people of all those countries. 
This second beast rose out of the earth, denoting 
his low and vile origin. He sprang from this sin- 
ful and sin-cursed earth, not from heaven. The 
two horns as a lamb show his deceitful humility 
and piety; a lamb outwardly, a dragon inwardly. 
Claiming to be of God, he was not only of the devil, 
but the devil himself as to his character and work. 

This is shown by his blasphemous speech. He 
spake as a dragon. He, it is said, exerciseth all 
the power of the first beast, or the Roman Catholic 
Church, and causeth the earth and them that 
dwell in it to worship the first beast whose deadly 
wound was healed. That is, this second beast in- 
tensified the bonds of spiritual slavery over the 
people, and riveted its chains upon them. 

Now the question arises, what is signified by this 
second beast? It is not Catholicism itself, but 
rather an arm of it, by which its power, to wage 



38 Lectures on Revelation. 



war against the saints, or the true church, was 
immensely multiplied. 

When the pope of Eomie found that he could not 
suppress heresy, as he called true Christianity, by 
the power of his corrupt church alone, he devised 
means to get the several civil governments, or king- 
doms, to make laws according to his wishes, in 
order the more effectually to kill out all the true 
Christians in the whole world and thus gain the 
final victory over God and his Christ. And all the 
civil governments, sure enough, passed laws of the 
pope's dictating, making it a serious misdemeanor 
for men, women and children to presume to wor- 
ship contrary to the false and wicked doctrines of 
Catholicism, and these laws required the most 
dreadful punishments imaginable to be inflicted on 
any who should presume to violate them in the 
least degree. So, when the church authorities ac- 
cused a person of heresy, he was handed over to the 
civil authorities to be punished. 

And now we are prepared to define this second 
beast. It was a union of the ecclesiastical and the 
civil powers in waging a war of extermination 
against the woman, or the real church of Jesus 
Christ in the wilderness. 

Under this beast, or vast persecuting power, 
papal Eolme reached the height of her infamous 
glory and of her iniquity. She rode roughshod 
over the heads of kings, potentates, and all civil 
powers. She employed spies to ferret out any and 
all who were even suspected of entertaining opin- 
ions contrary to her teachings, and to find out any 
hiding places where they might hold their meet- 
ings. And on some occasions, when a community 
was found where Christians had been permitted to 
live and multiply by some indulgent lower civil 
officer, a crusade was raised of the worst cut- 
throats and criminals that could be mustered and 



The Bed Dragon. 



39 



sent to that place, and the whole population was 
either murdered or dispersed to the four winds of 
heaven. Under this beast also was organized the 
bloody Inquisition, by which some parts of Europe, 
especially the Netherlands and Spain, were cursed 
for several centuries with such proceedings as 
would make the blood run cold to hear them re- 
lated now in all their horrors. A bull fight in 
Spain in these days seems shocking to us, espe- 
cially when we are told that all classes of people, 
men and women of high rank, gather to witness 
and applaud scenes that would cause ladies in this 
country to faint at the sight of. But this is almost 
nothing when compared to the auto-de-fe, as they 
called it, when multitudes gathered to see a num- 
ber of Christians of both sexes tied to stakes and 
burned alive. These awful spectacles were con- 
sidered by these misguided people under the power 
of the beast as acts of worship with which God 
was much pleased. It is said that in Spain alone 
341,000 Christians suffered in this dreadful man- 
ner, and perhaps as many more suffered in the 
Netherlands, which were in those days under Span- 
ish rule. Such cruel proceedings as these lasted 
from 1481 to 1813, when they were put an end to 
by Napoleon Bonaparte, and poor Spain is under 
a curse today from which she will never recover 
until she throws off the yoke of the pope and repu- 
diates all the marks of the beast. 

As to the signs and wonders that were said to 
be done by or through the beast, I will simply say 
that all this was an imposition on the ignorant and 
deluded people. For instance, they had what they 
called relics. These were a piece of wood, perhaps, 
which they made the people believe to be a part of 
the cross on which Jesus died. Or it would be a 
piece of a bone, or a little bit of hair, or something 
which they claimed to have been a part of some 



40 Lectures on Revelation. 



noted saint, as Peter or Paul, or to have belonged 
to some great saint of a later date. And the people 
were told that numbers had been cured of sickness 
by visiting the holy places where these things were 
kept, and by looking upon them. And it is said 
that none could buy or sell who did not have the 
mark of the beast or the number of his name. His- 
tory shows that this was literally true at certain 
times and in some countries. Men were allowed 
no privileges who were not outspoken Catholics, 
and who were not willing to do the pope's bidding 
on all occasions, no matter what it might be. 

And now we come to consider his naime, or the 
number of his name. This seems to have been 
given here for future readers of the book of Revela- 
tion to be able to designate what particular power 
this beast represented. We are told to count the 
number of the beast, which is the number of a man 
and that the number is 666. 

In the Latin language certain letters stood for 
certain numbers, as V, five; X, ten, and so on. 
Now, what name can we find that designates both 
a man, or his title, and a persecuting power against 
the true church? It has been suggested that the 
naime "Vicar of the Son of God," which is one of 
the names borne by the pope of Rome, fills the bill 
exactly, and I accept it here as the best I know of. 
In Latin it is thus: Vicarius Filii Dei. Now, let 
us see how this will do, remembering that in old 
Latin u was equal to v : 



V = 


5 


1 = 50 




1 


i = 1 


c == 


100 


i = 1 




1 


D = 500 


u == 


5 


i = 1 




1 


Total, 666 



It has been said that this name is written on the 
tiara, or crown of the pope of Borne. And as he 



The Eed Dragon. 



41 



was a man, and at the same time represented that 
great persecuting power of which we have been 
writing, it seems doubly sure that we have the cor- 
rect solution of the problem. 



LECTURE V. 
The Vials or the Last Plagues. 

This Lecture covers chapters fourteen, fifteen 
and sixteen. In the seventh chapter, at the begin- 
ning of the long period of Roman persecution, we 
had the sealing of the elect, who were to be saved 
during those unhappy times when the church was 
in the wilderness and the beasts, her enemies, 
seemed to have everything their own way. Now, 
here, in the fifteenth chapter, we arrive at the 
close of the Dark Ages, and consequently the close 
of the worst of Rome's ascendancy, civil and reli- 
gious; and, as a fitting prelude to what we are to 
have in the coming chapters, we are shown the 
Lamb standing on Mount Zion with a hundred and 
forty and four thousand, having his Father's name 
written on their foreheads. And the noise of their 
shouting was as the noise of many waters and of a 
great thunder. And there w^ere harpers harping 
with their harps. And they were singing a new 
song that none knew but the redeemed. These 
were said to be virgins, that is, persons who were 
not defiled with Rome's idolatry. For, in the 
Bible, idol worship is spiritual adultery. These 
are, of course, the same as the sealed in the seventh 
chapter. They are now with the Lamb in heaven. 
They are said to be the first fruits of the great har- 
vest that is to come in the next period, which we 
are now entering in this Lecture, and in which we 
are now living in this twentieth century. 

In verse six we have these words : "And I saw 
another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having 
the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that 
dwell on the earth, and to every nation and kin- 
dred and tongue." Of course, this reveals the be- 
ginning of the period of gospel expansion, as well 



The Last Plagues. 



43 



as of the increasing knowledge in general that was 
set in motion by the great reformation in Europe 
in the sixteenth century. This movement, known 
as the Reformation, was the result of various 
causes. Among these some have been mentioned 
already in a former Lecture as the revival of learn- 
ing and the invention of printing. But that which 
may be called the immediate cause was the pope's 
outrageous proceedings, especially in the selling of 
indulgences. In the beginning of the sixteenth 
century this practice had reached such a mon- 
strous and shameful height that it caused Martin 
Luther, though a Catholic himself, to call a halt 
to such high-handed proceedings. And that was 
the first step in the great reformation which fol- 
lowed, and whose results are destined to bring 
about the final death of popery, as well as all the 
other enemies of the true church of God. 

But a word of explanation in regard to indul- 
gences may here be proper. In the Catholic church 
many inventions were gotten up to suit the wishes 
of those in authority, and especially to bring 
money into the coffers of the church. Among these 
(and they were almost numberless) was one that 
they called indulgence. In the early years of the 
Romish church, punishments were inflicted on 
members who were guilty of certain sins, before 
the priests could forgive them. These punishments 
were called "penances." Later these penances 
could be remitted by paying a fine for the benefit 
of the church, or by doing some work which the 
church would accept in place of punishment. This 
paying or doing something was called "indul- 
gence." Later still, in the early years of the six- 
teenth century, the pope extended these indul- 
gences to cover sins not yet committed, as well as 
to sins already committed. So men could buy the 
forgiveness of any and all sins by paying so much 



44 



Lectures on Revelation. 



money into the church treasury. Martin Luther 
met with one who was peddling these indulgences 
among the ignorant and superstitious people, and 
was so disgusted and indignant that he began to 
call these and some others of the church's practices 
to the attention of thinking people, and this was 
the beginning of the Reformation. 

So this fourteenth chapter ushers in the time 
when the gospel could be preached freely among 
the people, and the Bible could be printed in all 
tongues and read by all people. This was a great 
change from what had been the custom for over 
1200 years, for during all those years the Bible was 
suppressed, and none were allowed to preach the 
gospel openly among the people. Persecution and 
death awaited all who dared even speak against 
the church of Rome, or to call in question any of 
her acts. But now it was all beginning to be dif- 
ferent. Under the new spirit that now began to 
move men's minds, they went so far even as not 
only to call in question some of the pope's teach- 
ings, but to defy his power. And, at last, to his 
great grief, the pope of Rome found himself unable 
to punish a man who openly opposed him. For, 
in the case of Luther, when the pope would con- 
demn him and his teachings, the paper containing 
this condemnation, instead of being executed, as 
such papers had been before for a thousand years, 
was taken by Luther and his friends and publicly 
burned in the streets of the city. Thus the pope 
was defied and he could not help himself. This 
was the first fatal blow popery had ever received 
and from which she will never recover. 

So now another angel follows the first, who went 
flying through the air with the everlasting gospel 
to preach, and this second angel said : "Babylon is 
fallen, is fallen!" This did not, of course, mean 
that Babylon, or Rome, was become extinct, but 



The Last Plagues. 



45 



that she had received her death blow and would die 
and go into perdition in due time. Rome, or the 
Romish church, is here called Babylon. This is be- 
cause in olden times the city of Babylon was the 
worst enemy Israel had. Nebuchadnezzar, the 
king of Babylon, took and destroyed the city of 
Jerusalem and carried the Jews away to Babylon 
as prisoners, where they had to remain seventy 
years. So now, as Rome was the chief enemy of 
the church, which is the true Israel, we find her 
called by that same name. 

Then a third angel follows, calling attention to 
the heavy condemnation and punishment that 
awaited those who should continue under the cir- 
cumstances to believe in and obey the wicked teach- 
ings of the pope and his church. For before this 
the people generally were in a measure excusable, 
as they had no opportunity generally to know any- 
thing but the lying superstitions of Rome. They 
were brought up to look upon the Bible as a dan- 
gerous book, and to hate any who were of the true 
church as accursed heretics. So, under these con- 
ditions they were really to be pitied. But now, in 
the times of which we are writing, it was different. 
The gross errors of Rome were exposed, and her 
many false teachings and corruptions were laid 
bare, and the Bible was printed in their mother 
tongue, and the true gospel was being preached 
publicly, and therefore there was no excuse for 
those who still held on to the pope and his errors. 

We now come to the white cloud in this four- 
teenth chapter, and the one like the Son of Man 
sitting thereon, having a golden crown on his head 
and a sharp sickle in his hand. And soon another 
angel appears with another sharp sickle, and they 
both are told to thrust in their sickles and reap 
the earth. And the earth was reaped in the vision, 
and the clusters of the vine of the earth were cast 



46 Lectures on Revelation. 



into the winepress of the wrath of God and trod- 
den or crushed. Now what do these symbolisms 
represent in the history of the church of God and 
of mankind? In answering this question, we must 
remember that the fulfillment of these prophecies 
is now going on and will go on with increasing 
power, till the Millennial period shall arrive. And 
remember, too, that these same things are again 
given under different symbolisms in the latter half 
of the nineteenth chapter. 

The one on the white cloud signifies Christ go- 
ing forth in the power of his Holy Spirit, conquer- 
ing and to conquer. The angels in the vision rep- 
resent his co-workers, the ministers of the gospel, 
and all other laborers in his kingdom,, great and 
small. But what are we to understand by the har- 
vest of the earth, the vine, and the clusters of the 
vine? These must denote all the sinful or evil 
things — moral, civil, social, and religious — that 
hinder the coming of the kingdom of heaven in its 
full glory and power. But we have here two sickles 
and two reapers. What are we to understand by 
these things? The one on the white cloud signified 
the principal or most important reaper, and of 
course that part of the harvest which he reaped 
was the most important. Well, now, let us divide 
the harvest into two parts, as follows : the first 
includes the evil things of the world which are 
strictly religious or spiritual; the second, then, 
must include those which relate to civil and social 
evils, which are subordinate to the strictly reli- 
gious ones. 

So, then, through the power of the word of God 
preached and propagated among all nations and 
peoples, all erroneous religious systems by which 
mlankind are deluded and spiritually ruined are to 
be reaped, or taken out of the way and cast into 
the winepress of the wrath of God, which is perdi- 



The Last Plagues. 



47 



tion. Then, as a consequence, all bad systems of 
government among men will disappear, and all so- 
cial and political abuses will likewise be reaped or 
cast into perdition. The last verse in this four- 
teenth chapter is strong, figurative language, in 
keeping with the symbolisms of the sickles, the 
grapes, and the reapers, and it conveys an idea of 
the stupendous amount of the evil things crushed 
out of existence. 

We now reach chapter fifteen, which is a sort of 
preface to the sixteenth. John saw another great 
sign in heaven, the seven angels having the seven 
last plagues, which are to close up God's work of 
preparing the way for the coming of his kingdom 
in the Millennial Age. The seven vials of wrath, 
which this chapter introduces, constitute another 
way of expressing the same things as were ex- 
pressed, under different symbolisms, in the reap- 
ings of the fourteenth chapter. Only in that chap- 
ter the reapings referred both to religious and 
other evils, whereas the vials of wrath have special 
reference to Roman Catholicism and its kindred 
evils, and its effects on mankind and on the nations 
of the earth. And John saw, also, a sea of glass, 
as it were, mingled with fire, and on this sea those 
who had gotten the victory over the beast and his 
image, having the harps of God. These, of course, 
are the same as the hundred and forty and four 
thousand in the last chapter with the Lamb on 
Mount Zion. And they sang the praises of God, 
and magnified him for the great and marvelous 
works which he had done. Then John saw the 
temple of the tabernacle of testimony in heaven 
open. And seven angels came out of the temple 
clothed in white and girded with golden girdles, 
having the seven last plagues. And one of the four 
living creatures gave unto the seven angels seven 
golden vials full of the wrath of God Almighty. 



48 Lectures on Revelation. 



And the temple was filled with smoke from the 
glory of God and his power. And no one could 
enter the temple till the seven last plagues were 
fulfilled. This last indicates that no one might 
enter the temple to intercede for the people con- 
cerned and pray that these last plagues might not 
be sent upon the earth. 

The sixteenth chapter is the chapter of the 
plagues. The reader will doubtless notice the sim- 
ilarity of the vials in this chapter and the trumpets 
in eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh chapters. But 
we must remember that the calamities which fol- 
lowed the sounding of the trumpets were real and 
natural. They were destructions of nations and 
the lives of people, and of towns and cities and 
civil institutions. But the results of the vials refer 
to the destructions of religious, moral, civil, and 
political evils, such as Bomanism, Mohammedan- 
ism, heathenism, infidelity, and, indeed, all errors 
in religious belief and teaching, and likewise all 
social and moral evils. The trumpets introduce 
real wars and all their calamities. The vials in- 
troduce bloodless wars on evil institutions. 

And there came a great voice out of the temple 
bidding the seven angels to go forth and pour out 
their vials upon the earth. The first poured out 
his vial upon the earth, that is, that part of the 
earth occupied by popery. And there fell upon 
the people who had the mark of the beast a noisome 
and grievous sore. Now, this is not to be understood 
as real sores on their flesh, but rather mental sores 
and pains, that gave much trouble and anxiety, 
especially to the leaders of the Romish church. 
This began to be fulfilled in the beginning of the 
Reformation period, when the pope saw and felt 
that his power and influence over nations, kings, 
and people were growing weaker. And, of course, 
by these signs of the times, he saw clearly that un- 



The Last Plagues. 



49 



less something could be done to prevent it, his bad 
glory would depart from him, and he would be 
humbled to the dust. This hurt his proud spirit 
worse than sores could have hurt his body. For 
over a thousand years this beast, or anti-Christ, 
had possessed and wielded almost unlimited sway 
over the bodies and souls of the people of all so- 
called Christian nations. The pope and the church 
were honored and obeyed without question by 
kings and their subjects. But now matters were 
changing, and they kept on changing more and 
more rapidly, and so the pope lost first one thing 
and then another, and one nation and then another 
slipped out of his hands, and left him in his impo- 
tent wrath to grieve over his internal sores. And 
these changes are still going on as the light of pure 
Christianity shines more and more in Catholic 
countries, and the eyes of the people are opened to 
see more plainly the errors of the 'Romish, beast. 
Thus the pride of Rome is being humibled, her once 
vast power is surely slipping out of her hands, 
and, though she tries hard to prevent it, her true 
character, as the mother of harlots and abomina- 
tions of the earth, is daily becoming more and 
more apparent, And thus the nations are getting 
ready, in a summary nijanner, to "eat her flesh and 
burn her with fire." 17 :16. 

And the second angel poured out his vial on the 
sea, and the sea was turned into blood, and every- 
thing in the sea died. The sea seems to be inimical 
to the Eomish church. They have tried again and 
again to spread their doctrines by means of the 
sea into distant lands. At first they seemed to 
have right much success in the New World and in 
the islands of the ocean. But for a long time now 
it has been almost useless to plant Catholicism in 
new fields, either heathen or Mohammedan; and 
those in the New World are fast outgrowing its 
4 



50 



Lectures on Revelation. 



effete system of gross superstition. And it is a 
fact that the strongest nations today on the sea 
are not Catholic, but Protestant nations. Time 
was when Spain was apparently the mistress of the 
seas. But she had to yield the palm to Protestant 
England. And to-day Spain, the rankest Catholic 
power on earth, is almost helpless so far as her 
naval power is concerned. 

The third angel poured out his vial on the rivers 
and fountains of waters, and they likewise became 
blood. 

Rivers and fountains are the means and sources 
of the fertility and riches of a country. If these 
are turned to blood, or destroyed, then the country 
becomes, so to speak, a desert, and is incapable of 
sustaining life. So this vial shows that the many 
sources and means of nourishing and strengthen- 
ing Romanism in the world are failing and leaving 
the poor old pope an almost helpless prisoner in 
the Vatican. There to-day he, like an aristocratic 
family divested of all real wealth and power, 
vainly tries to keep up a show of his former gran- 
deur and respectability. But his poverty and 
weakness are too plainly seen, and the real intelli- 
gence of the world to-day is laughing at the thin 
varnish and veneering that are used to hide the 
real situation. Kings used to crave his blessing, 
or tremble at his frown. But now they know too 
well he has no blessing to give, and as to his frown, 
they recognize that to be the result of his inward 
chagrin and impotent wrath. Thus God is judging 
and rewarding this old persecuting enemy of all 
good by giving him, so to speak, blood to drink. 
This is just and right, since he has shed rivers of 
the blood of the saints. 

And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon 
the sun, and power was given unto him to scorch 
men with fire. The sun is the source of light and 



The Last Plagues. 



51 



heat. When the light and heat thereof are normal, 
then men see the light and feel the heat with pleas- 
ure. But when these are in an abnormal condi- 
tion — too much or too little — men are uncomforta- 
ble and have to suffer more or less. Now, in this 
vial we have a symbolism of too much light. So 
now we have the interpretation. Koine, like the 
owl, glories in darkness. Light is just what she 
don't want. And great light, as this vial reveals, 
to her is like glaring light and burning heat to the 
green grass of the field. It is simply death to 
either. The mjore of the darkness of ignorance and 
gross superstition, the more Eomanism can flour- 
ish. For Roane to flourish and live, the Bible must 
be suppressed or perverted, schools must be re- 
stricted to their own teachers and dogmas. The 
real light must not shine. The real truth must be 
withheld or covered up with the rubbish of the 
pope's erroneous teachings. For Borne and her 
doctrines to flourish, the people must be kept not 
only in spiritual darkness, but in civil darkness 
also. Liberty, civil or religious, can never be tol- 
erated by the pope and his church. Neither can 
they live long where either or both prevail. 

So, then, the teaching of this vial is that so much 
light has come into the religious, moral, and civil 
world, that those men who are of the pope's party 
are, as it were, scorched with heat, and are led to 
blaspheme God and his light of truth. For it is 
the truth after all that burns and kills Romanism. 

The fifth angel poured out his vial on the seat of 
the beast, and his kingdom was full of darkness, 
and they blasphemed God and repented not of their 
evil deeds. 

The seat of the beast must mean the city of 
Rome. Or it may be Italy in general. Or still 
more particularly, it may refer to the states of the 
church. This was a part of Italy containing the 



52 Lectures on Revelation. 



city of Rome, over which the pope ruled as a sort 
of king. This portion of Italy was his special 
dominion from about the middle of the eighth cen- 
tury till the year 1870, when Victor Emmanuel 
united all Italy in one kingdom and made Rome 
his capital city, and thus divested the pope of all 
his civil possessions and confined him to his eccle- 
siastical duties. Of course, this was a severe blow 
to the pope and to popery. His kingdom, so to 
speak, was full of darkness. His wrath was ex- 
treme but useless. He could not help himself in 
the least particular. He blasphemed and cursed, 
no doubt, but to no purpose. Thus the mental 
pains and sores of the beast and his followers be- 
came more and more aggravated. And as the true 
light shines more brightly year after year in his 
kingdom, it only reveals to him the blackness and 
darkness of that perdition which is surely coming 
upon him and his evil designs. No wonder he 
gnaws his tongue in his impotent rage and blas- 
phemes the God of truth and light. 

The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the 
great river Euphrates, and the water thereof was 
dried up so that the way of the kings of the East 
might be prepared. 

For many centuries the Euphrates River was 
the eastern boundary of the great civil Roman Em- 
pire in Asia, as the Danube and Rhine rivers w^ere 
on the north and west in Europe. So here this 
same river is spoken of as a symbolic boundary be- 
tween the kingdom of the beast and the kingdom of 
God, or, in other words, between the Catholic and 
Protestant powers of the world. But what are we 
to understand by the kings of the East? At this 
day and time there seems to be nothing east of the 
Euphrates River that promises anything to assist 
in breaking down the powers of the Romish 
church. For on the east of that river now we find 



The Last Plagues. 



53 



the nearest countries under the baleful influence of 
the false prophet Mohammed, as in Persia and Hin- 
doostan. Further on in India we find gross hea- 
thenism with a sprinkle of real Christianity. But 
in this small bit of Christianity, first introduced 
by Carey and Judson and others, and now nour- 
ished by the power of Protestant England, whose 
dominion seems to be destined to revolutionize the 
vast Indian Empire, there may be a seed to solve 
the problem. But a certain poet has said "West- 
ward the course of empire takes its way," and this 
has always been true. For, civilly speaking, the 
first great empire was the Babylonian on the Eu- 
phrates Biver. The next was the Medo-Persian, 
which extended a little further west. Then fol- 
lowed the Grecian under Alexander the Great. 
This extended still further west. Then followed 
the Roman, which extended westward to the At- 
lantic Ocean, which seemed then to be the utmost 
limit of the world in that direction. But after a 
while this Roman Empire was broken up into ten 
kingdoms, as it is expressed in the book of Revela- 
tion. One of these kingdoms is England. And in 
course of tinije Protestant colonies left England 
and founded our great American empire or repub- 
lic, still farther west. And this is "Time's noblest 
offspring," as the poet has it. Well, this great 
nation of ours, now the seat of the purest Chris- 
tianity the world has ever seen since the apostolic 
days, has extended across this continent to the 
mighty Pacific Ocean, and her benign influence, 
both moral, civil and religious, is crossing over 
the great ocean, westward still, and is touching 
the hitherto benighted nations of Eastern Asia. 
Japan for a long time shut her doors against the 
world. But American artillery shattered those 
gates to atoms, and compelled the Sunrise Kingdom 
to become a civil neighbor and admit the blessings 



54 



Lectures on Revelation. 



of Western civilization. And old conservative 
China, the Celestial Empire, as she calls herself, 
has at last begun to pluck the beam out of her own 
eye, and to be able to see clearly that there are 
some better things in the world than her long cher- 
ished ideals, civil and religious. And now we be- 
gin to see how the symbolism of this sixth vial is 
to cross the continent of Asia and cross the Eu- 
phrates River and pass over to Catholic Europe, 
and thus be the final death of the beast of Borne 
and the false prophet Mohammed, as well as the 
many phases of idolatry in other parts of the 
world. Modern missions, coupled with Christian 
education and backed by civil and religious liberty, 
are the means that are to break down all bars and 
gates and ride triumphant over all opposition to 
that victory which is the hope of a world groaning 
in darkness and in tyranny. 

But now we come to the symbolic frogs that were 
said to be the spirits of devils proceeding out of the 
mouth of the dragon, the beast, and the false 
prophet. And these evil spirits were said to go to 
all the kings of the whole world to gather them to- 
gether to the battle of God Almighty. These 
spirits, or frogs, represent the combined powers of 
popery, Mohammedanism, idolatry, infidelity, and 
of every other evil principle in this sin-cursed 
world of ours, to make a last stand against the en- 
croachments of pure Christianity and all it stands 
for, against their dark kingdom. This is a repeti- 
tion of the reapings in the fourteenth chapter, and 
the great battle in the last half of the nineteenth, 
though under different symbolismis. 

And the seventh angel poured out his vial in the 
air, and a great voice from heaven said: "It is 
done." That is, the blessed result of the efforts 
then set in motion and then going on were so sure 
that it was said to be already done. Those things 



The Last Plagues. 



55 



may be thus summed up, speaking in present time. 
Pure Christianity is now spreading more and more 
rapidly every year, and the time can not be very 
distant when there will be a combination of all its 
enemies, under the instigation of the evil one and 
all his co-workers, to crush out and finally destroy 
God's kingdom in the world. But as this is all 
future, we can not know r all the proceedings. But 
as to the result there can be no doubt. It will be a 
battle royal, a terrible Waterloo, with rage on the 
one hand and infinite power on the other. And it 
will doubtless justify all the awful symbolisms 
given in Revelation to give an idea thereof. And 
the rumblings of this coming storm may be even 
now both seen and felt, if not heard. Why is 
Romanism so intent to get as much power as pos- 
sible in these United States? Why does she, by 
flattery and cunning in every conceivable manner, 
try so hard to banish the Bible from the public 
schools, to gain control as far as possible of our 
large cities, and to get possession of our govern- 
ment? It is because she knows that our free in- 
stitutions and pure Christianity are destined, if 
not prevented, to finally destroy her power among 
men, which is founded on nothing but the lying 
devices of Satan himself. And again, why do the 
followers of the false prophet Mohammed work so 
hard to keep every semblance of Christianity out 
of their countries, and to get as much foothold as 
possible in the newly opened continent of Africa? 
It is to keep the true light away from the people, 
and so to preserve their errors and superstitions 
as a cloud of darkness over the people. And 
again, why should such an intelligent people as the 
French rush into infidelity, when Romanism had 
insulted their common sense by her absurdities? 
It is because Satan, the great dragon, had so well 
succeeded under popery in excluding pure Chris- 



56 



Lectures on Revelation. 



tianity from France, by the crusades against them 
at one time in the south of that country, and by 
that almost unpardonable massacre of Bartholo- 
mew at another time. So now, as France knows 
no church but Rome, and as she sees that to be 
rotten to the core, she swings off to the other ex- 
treme of infidelity, if not atheism. 

Then why should so many of the so-called wise 
men of our day attack the Bible in one way or an- 
other? Why so much higher criticism? Why so 
many open or covert attempts to destroy the old 
book? It is because the enemy of God and man 
knows that if the Bible continues to live and to be 
believed, his kingdom can not stand. So every- 
thing is being done that can be done to down him 
who rides on the white horse, whose name is a The 
Word of God," and "King of Kings," and "Lord 
of Lords." 



LECTURE VI. 



This Lecture covers chapters seventeen, eighteen 

and nineteen. 

Chapter seventeen gives explanations only. The 
last chapter had brought the history of the true 
church down to that time when Eome or Babylon 
was fallen, and now, in the seventeenth, one of the 
angels who had the seven vials of wrath proposes 
to show John the great harlot, which, of course, is 
the Roman Catholic church. The symbolisms here 
used can be applied with all ease to popery, but to 
nothing else. So there seems to be no doubt at all 
of the correctness of our interpretation. 

The angel carried John away into the wilder- 
ness, where he saw a woman sitting on a scarlet 
colored beast. This beast was full of names of 
blasphemy, and had seven heads and ten horns. 
And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet 
color, and decked with gold and precious stones. 
And upon her forehead was a name written : "Mys- 
tery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and 
abominations of the earth." The woman was also 
represented as drunken with the blood of saints 
and of the martyrs of Jesus. And now the angel 
proposes to show him what these things mean, or 
what these symbols represent. First, then, what is 
meant by this woman? In chapter twelve we saw 
a woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon 
under her feet, etc. This woman was a glorious 
representation of the true church of God. And here 
this gaudy, drunken woman must represent the 
corrupt church of Borne, or, more correctly, of the 
devil. For we have already seen that the father of 
lies is its author. The character and the names of 
this woman are exactly in keeping with the church 
of Rome. "Mystery!" She is, indeed, a mystery, 



58 



Lectures on Revelation. 



and a mystery of iniquity. Her deep hypocrisy, 
blended with the highest claims of piety, is a mys- 
tery that can't be unraveled. Her infallibility and 
her other godlike powers and attributes, existing 
in a poor, weak, sinful man, and that man not even 
a regenerate man, constitute a mystery indeed. 
"Babylon the great." We have seen in a former 
chapter that Babylon was the worst enemy that the 
ancient Jewish people ever had to encounter. And 
here the name is given to Rome, or Rome's ecclesi- 
astical powder, showing that she is now the worst 
and the most cruel enemy of the true church, which 
is the real Israel. "Mother of harlots and abomi- 
nations." Harlotry or adultery is, in a spiritual 
sense, idolatry. And we all know that Rome, 
meaning the church of Rome, is the mother of idol 
worship, so far as Christianity is concerned. No 
other people who claim to be Christians in any 
sense have ever invented a system of idolatry in 
place of the true worship of God. But Rome wor- 
ships the virgin mother of Jesus and prays to her, 
instead of Jesus himself. She also worships a mul- 
titude of saints, and expects miore good from them 
than from God himself. She worships relics which 
claim to be parts of some holy person, or to have 
been in some way connected with a saint or the 
Saviour himself. But these are all mere fabrica- 
tions, and are as real idols as any that ever were 
bowed down to by the heathen in their temples. 
And as to the abominations committed by Rome 
there is hardly any end to them, either in number 
or in the magnitude of their heinousness. The 
day of judgment only can reveal the awful abomi- 
nations she has palmed off as holy teachings, 
which the poor, ignorant people believe, and on 
which dry chaff their poor souls feed and die. 
And oh, the abominations of their confessionals 
and their nunneries! Could the betrayals of con- 



Mother of Harlots. 



59 



fidence, the seductions, the adulteries, the rapes, 
the infanticides, and the murders connected with 
these institutions be told in all their blackness of 
horrors, the worst Turk on earth would stand 
aghast at the tale. Yes, she is the mother of the 
abominations of the earth, religious, social and 
political. Like produces like. The woman her- 
self is an abomination and she can produce nothing 
else. If she ever does a good thing, it is, you may 
be sure, done with bad and selfish motives. In 
the last verse we are told that the woman is the 
city of Eome itself. But of course the city of 
Rome is taken here to mean not only the city itself, 
but the ecclesiastical power of which the city is 
the seat. 

Now what is the beast? This means, of course, 
the same as the red dragon in the twelfth chapter 
and the first beast in the thirteenth. And that is 
Rome as a government, both civil and ecclesias- 
tical. As a civil government Rome, the red 
dragon persecuted the true church till she was de- 
stroyed; and then the beast took the seat and 
authority of the dragon, and continued the perse- 
cution against the true church with increased mal- 
ice and cruelty. In verse eight we are told that he 
was and is not and yet is. It was at first as the 
red dragon, that is, the pagan Roman Empire. 
When that was subverted then it was not, that is, 
the pagan Roman empire was not. But when 
that counterfeit church of Romfe was invented, 
then it was again in the beast of the thirteenth 
chapter, the same as here mentioned. This beast 
and all he represents ascended from the bottomless 
pit, and will finally go into perdition. 

The seven heads of the beast on which the wo- 
man was sitting are said to denote the seven moun- 
tains, or hills, on which the city of Rome is built. 
All students know that Rome has always been 
called the city of seven hills. 



60 Lectures on Revelation. 



"And there are seven kings : five are fallen, and 
one is, and the other is not yet come," verse ten. 
Now the explanation of these "kings" shows be- 
yond a doubt that the beast here, as we have said 
above, is Rome, as a government, first civil, and 
then ecclesiastical — civil till its downfall in 476, 
and then ecclesiastical under the popes. 

The word "kings" here is not to be taken in its 
literal sense, but in the sense of a form of govern- 
ment. So here it means that the Roman govern- 
ment has existed under seven different forms. 
Five of these forms had passed away when John 
wrote. One was then in existence; and, of course, 
the other had not come then. Now let us con- 
sider these seven forms of government in their 
order. The city of Rome was founded in the year 
753 B. C, according to the usual chronology. At 
first its government was monarchical, that is, it was 
a kingdom. This lasted about 144 years, and then 
the kings were expelled and the government took 
the form of a republic. This continued for about 
sixty years, and gave place to a government called 
a Decemvirate, that is, a governmient in the hands 
of ten men. This lasted only a few years. After 
that the government may be called a Consulate, as 
it was in the hands of two consuls. This form 
lasted till the time of Julius Csesar, about 60 B. C. 
Under the consuls the Roman people increased in 
power very rapidly and conquered many countries, 
and reached the zenith of their power. About the 
year 60 B. C. the government fell into the hands 
of three men, hence it was called a Triumvirate. 
This did not last long, but soon gave place to the 
empire, which was in existence when John wrote. 
So the five fallen ones were the Kingdom, the Re- 
public, the Decemvirate, the Consulate, and the 
Triumvirate. The one which was during John's 
life was the empire. This lasted till 476 A. D. 



Mother of Harlots. 



61 



The one that John said was to come is now to be 
described. 

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, 
Rome as a civil power ceased to be. But soon it 
became the seat of a spiritual or ecclesiastical 
power under the popes, who, in a few years, be- 
came even more powerful than kings. At first the 
authority of the pope w T as confined to spiritual 
things, but after a time he got possession of cer- 
tain portions of the country of Italy and so be- 
came a civil ruler with Rome for his capital city. 
So here we find Rome again the seat of government 
with the pope on the throne. This is the seventh 
"king," or form of government spoken of in this 
seventeenth chapter. Perhaps it will be well here 
to explain how this came about. In the year 751 
A. D. the French people wanted to depose their 
incompetent King Childeric, and place Pepin, the 
mayor of the palace, on the throne. Pope Zachary 
gave them permission to do so. And then Pepin, 
out of gratitude, gave the pope that part of the 
territory of Italy known as the Exarchate of 
Ravenna. Later still other portions of territory, 
including the city of Rome were donated to the 
pope, and so he became the civil ruler of what for 
many years was known as the "States of the 
Church." This lasted till 1870, when, as we have 
seen above, Victor Emmanuel took this from the 
pope, and so divested him of all civil power. 

And then it is said, "The beast that was, and is 
not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and 
goeth into perdition." 

The beast that was and is not, is the red dragon, 
or Satan personified in the pagan Roman Empire. 
But now he exists again as the "beast" of chapter 
thirteen, or Satan personified in the Roman Catho- 
lic Church. He is the eighth, but of the seven, be- 
cause the pope and popery, or Roman Catholicism 



62 



Lectures on Revelation. 



are all one and the same thing in effect. "And 
the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings 
which have received no kingdom as yet. ?? These 
ten horns refer to the divisions into which the old 
Roman Empire in Europe was divided by the bar- 
barians. Ten is a definite for an indefinite num- 
ber. But it denotes the kingdoms that have for a 
long time now covered the territory of the ancient 
empire. These may be enumerated as follows : 
Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Belgium, 
Holland, Switzerland, Austria, and Greece. These, 
it says, receive power one hour with the beast. This 
means they exist in union and harmony with the 
pope for a short time, and do his bidding faith- 
fully in all things. This was true to the letter 
from the beginning of these kingdoms till the 
Reformation, and with some of them longer. These 
have one mind, it says, and shall give their power 
to the beast. They did this with all their hearts, 
especially in persecuting the church of God or the 
woman in the wilderness. And we read further 
that they shall make war with the Lamb. This 
they did with terrible earnestness. But we are 
assured that the Lamb shall overcome them, for He 
is Lord of lords and King of kings. And they that 
are with him are called and chosen and faithful. 
And it is said that these ten horns or kingdoms 
after awhile shall hate the harlot, that is, the Rom- 
ish Church, and they shall make her desolate and 
naked, and shall eat her flesh and burn her with 
fire. For the Lord has put it into their hearts to 
do his will. Most of these kingdoms have already 
discarded the pope's authority and the rest will 
follow in due time. May the good time soon come 
when the beast will go into perdition. 

We now come to the eighteenth chapter. This 
contains a further declaration of the fall of Baby- 
lon. An angel comes down from heaven having 



Mother of Harlots. 



63 



great power, and the earth was lightened with his 
glory. This angel and his glory represent the great 
light that has come into the world through the 
spreading of the word of God among the nations. 
We are now living in this period. For the sixth 
trumpet and the sixth vial coincide as to time, and 
both mark the period that ushers in the Millennial 
glory. The last part of the nineteenth chapter 
marks the same period. The fall of Babylon, here 
declared with a strong voice by the angel, is the 
introduction of a metaphorical figure, in which the 
final fall of the great Roman Catholic power is 
compared to the fall of a mighty city, such as the 
fall of Babylon or Tyre in ancient times. The say- 
ing that it had become the habitation of devils, and 
the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every 
hateful and unclean bird, calls to mind the fallen 
walls and the battered and ruined buildings of an 
old, forsaken city, in which all foul creatures find 
a congenial habitation. ( See Isa. 13 : 19-22. ) 

We will revert again to the great light this angel 
represented. For the last two or three centuries 
the light of the pure gospel has been making con- 
siderable progress among the nations of the earth. 
Especially has this been the case for the last three- 
quarters of a century; and at this time the spirit 
of missions is beginning to move mightily among 
all classes of Christians and in all denominations. 
The blessings of true religion, of Christian educa- 
tion, and of civil and religious liberty are being 
disseminated among the nations of this world as 
never before. And with the ever-increasing facili- 
ties of travel and of supplying the people of all 
lands with the word of God in their own language, 
these blessings will spread more and more rapidly 
still as the years go on. By noticing the reports 
of all missionary organizations, we are struck with 
the gratifying fact that every year shows a marked 



64 Lectures on Revelation. 



advance over all the preceding years. The signs 
of the times are propitious. All nations are open 
to the missionary as never before. The thoughtful 
people of all nations are turning their eyes to the 
light of Christian America, and asking for the 
same light to be sent to them. The Macedonian 
cry is being heard all around the world as never 
before, "Come over and help us." I sometimes 
think that the course of Christianity in the world 
may be compared to a comet — to Halley's comet, 
for instance. This comet, when nearing that part 
of its orbit in which the sun is located, moves with 
ever-accelerating speed ; but when it has passed the 
sun, and starts out on its long journey towards 
that end of its orbit farthest from the sun, its ve- 
locity becomes slower and slower, till, at its remote 
aphelion, it almost seems to be at a standstill. 
Then it repeats its course again in the sam*e man- 
ner. But mark one thing, when a comet leaves 
the sun its velocity is so great that it makes the 
first half of its course around its orbit in a much 
shorter time than it takes to make its trip towards 
the sun. 

Now let us apply this to the observed course of 
the true church of God on earth. At the time of 
the apostles it was at its perihelion. But the apos- 
tles themselves were not all dead before there was 
a perceptible decline in its purity and its glory. 
For the next two hundred vears it had receded so 
far away that its identity was hardly discernible. 
And then it seemed for a thousand years to have 
become lost in the gross darkness of the Middle 
Ages. All seemed to be lost so far as pure Chris- 
tianity was concerned. But at last the time of its 
return to its glorious perihelion of the Millennium 
was slowly but surely approaching. Luther 
nailed his famous theses to the doors of the cathe- 
dral church at Wurtemberg. The pope condemned 



Mother of Harlots. 



65 



hiin and his doctrines by his famous bull. But 
that bull, instead of being honored, was burned in 
the streets of the city, in contempt of the pope and 
his power. The Bible was published in the mother 
tongue of the people. Luther's great speech at 
Worms was heard, the speech that thrilled Europe 
and caused the pope and his minion, Charles V, to 
tremble on their tottering thrones. And the star 
in the east appeared again, which led the wise men 
of the earth to go again in search of Him who was 
born King of the Jews. And ever since those stir- 
ring days the true church has been emerging more 
and more from its long obscurity and shedding its 
benign influence over all the earth with ever- 
accelerating rapidity; and the children of to-day 
may live to see this the glorious church of God, as 
a bride in her ornaments, wheel around the Sun of 
Righteousness, her Bridegroom, and take her place 
by His side, ere Halley's comet emerges again from 
its long absence and comes the second time unto 
their view. 

But now we come to notice an exhortation de- 
livered to God's children bv a voice from heaven, 
which is exceedingly pertinent to the Protestant 
churches of this generation. That voice said: 
"Conite out of her, my people, that ye be not par- 
takers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her 
plagues." As the captive Jews were called upon 
to come out of Babylon when her doom was immi- 
nent, and as Christ exhorted His followers to 
leave Jerusalem when they should see the signs of 
her desolation, so here this voice from heaven calls 
upon all Christians to come out of Borne or popery 
before she goes into perdition. 

Since the beginning of the Reformation, God's 
people have been split up more or less into dif- 
ferent denominations or sects. Manv of these came 
directly or indirectly out of Romanism, as reformed 
5 



66 



Lectures on Revelation. 



churches. But in those days of transition from 
darkness to light, many good men, like Luther and 
Calvin, and others, in their eagerness to eliminate 
from their systems the grosser evils of Romanism, 
such as justification by works, seemed to overlook 
the fact that all her dogmas and inventions were 
bad, and so brought along with them some of her 
lesser evils, which are none the less marks of the 
beast. Among these we may notice that form of 
church government known as ecclesiasticism or 
hierarchy. This is a form of church government 
in which it takes all the separate organizations to 
constitute the church, as the Roman Catholic 
Church, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian 
Church, North, the M. E. Church, South. This 
kind of church government is as truly of Rome as 
the baptizing of bells and the worship of relics. 
For in the New Testament we have nothing of the 
kind. Every separate church organization was an 
independent republic, having no head but Christ, 
and acknowledging no laws but His own, given 
through Him or His inspired apostles. Then again 
the original churches had no orders of officers — 
nothing but pastors and deacons. So all ranks of 
church officers, higher and lower, were unknown to 
the early church, and had their origin in Rome; 
and modes of baptism were as completely unknown 
to the apostolic churches as the doctrine of purga- 
tory. The learned world today acknowledges the 
fact that the primitive churches practiced believ- 
er's immersion and nothing else. 

Now all these things, and, perhaps, some others, 
that many of God's true people cling to and teach, 
are simply marks of the beast, and must be dis- 
carded as such sooner or later. For the time is 
fast approaching when the bride must get ready 
for the coming Bridegroom, and she must be clothed 
in pure white. It will never do to have these or 



Mother of Harlots. 



67 



any other marks of Anti-christ polluting the bridal 
robes. The church in that day must and will all 
be one, as Jesus and His Father are one. The two 
highest duties of all Protestant denominations, and 
of all true Christians now is, to honestly square 
themselves by the word of God, and discard, as 
things unholy, all that is of Eome, no matter how 
hard or how humiliating the task may be ; and then 
go to work, with a united front, with Him on the 
white horse, who is called "Faithful and True." 
And thus join in the final battle against the beast, 
the false prophet, and all other evils, that is to be 
the prelude to the coming of the kingdom. (See 
nineteenth chapter.) The greatest drawback now 
to the successful spread of the gospel is the di- 
vided forces of Christianity. Let all come together 
and get squarely on the old book and then all will 
be well. Then the world will begin to believe that 
the Father has sent the Son. The balance of this 
eighteenth chapter, following the metaphor of a 
fallen city, displays the friends of popery lament- 
ing over her downfall and enumerating her multi- 
tudinous works and her lost glories. And in the 
last paragraph a mighty angel drops a millstone 
into the sea, as a figure, denoting her utter and 
everlasting ruin. 

The nineteenth chapter opens with a grand ora- 
torio of praise to God for His wonderful works in 
destroying Babylon, the great corrupting harlot, 
and in avenging the blood of His saints at her 
hands. This glorious song of praise was partici- 
pated in by much people in heaven, by the four liv- 
ing creatures, by the twenty-four elders, and by the 
voice of a great multitude, which sounded like 
great waters and mighty thundering from heaven. 
The refrain of this song was "Alleluia," which 
means "Praise ye Jehovah." And they said, "Let 
us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him : for 



68 



Lectures on iKevelation. 



the marriage of the Lamb is come and His wife 
hath made herself ready. And to her it was granted 
that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and 
white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of 
saints." This denotes a period in the history of 
the church when all Christendom will be united 
and divested of everything impure, unholy, and 
hateful. And it also points to the time when 
Christianity, as a whole, has arrayed herself in the 
pure, white righteousness of implicit obedience to 
God's will, and of strict conformity to His word. 
Yes, a time when the church, no longer in the wil- 
derness, but standing, so to speak, on Mount Zion, 
the most conspicuous and the most glorious insti- 
tution on earth, shall claim her own, as the bride, 
arrayed in her ornaments of glorious beauty, and 
shall begin to take her place by the side of the 
Lamb, and thus enter into His glory, the glory of 
Him in whose blood she has been washed. 

From verse eleven to the end of this chapter we 
have another portrayal of the stirring events which 
shall immediately precede the glorious opening of 
the Millennial Age, when Christ and the church, 
His bride, shall reign on the earth for a thousand 
years. These same events have been given in pre- 
vious chapters, but under different figures or rep- 
resentations. It says : "And I saw heaven opened, 
and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon 
him was called Faithful and True, and in right- 
eousness He doth judge and make war. His eyes 
were a flame of fire, and on His head were many 
crowns; and He had a name written, that no man 
knew but He Himself. And He was clothed with 
a vesture dipped in blood : and His name is called 
The Word of God. And the armies which were in 
heaven followed Him on white horses, clothed in 
linen, white and clean. And out of His mouth 
goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should smite 



Mother of Harlots. 



69 



the nations ; and He shall rule them with a rod of 
iron; and He treadeth the winepress of the fierce- 
ness and wrath of Almighty God." This intro- 
duces the closing years of the mighty missionary 
period which is now going on. But heretofore the 
work, though wonderful, has been slow and much 
hampered by difficulties. These difficulties were, 
and still are, in a large measure, owing to the fol- 
lowing things : A direct opposition to the work of 
missions on the part of good men. This, of course, 
is founded on a misconception of the teachings of 
the Bible, and is fast becoming extinct. Another 
and serious trouble is the indifference of the mass 
of church members. This is slowly but surely 
passing away. Then another is the broken up con- 
dition of Protestant Christianity into different and 
sometimes clashing denominations. By this one 
trouble the work of God's people in missions is 
shorn of half its power. This difficulty will have 
to pass away before the wonderful times of which 
we are now speaking can possibly come. There 
are many and favorable signs now existing, which 
point to the passing of this most serious difficulty. 
The only other hindrance I wish to mention here 
is, the sad failure on the part of God's people of all 
classes of giving to the work of spreading the gos- 
pel over all the world. It has been well said, that 
heretofore we have been only playing at missions. 

God wants and intends that His people shall be 
co-workers with Him in the great work of bringing 
the world to Christ. We can't all go and preach, 
but we can all give, and give liberally to help carry 
on the work. Some are called to go down into 
the well, others are called to hold the rope. Some 
must go to the battle, others must stay by the 
stuff. Let all do their duty, and then all will fare 
equally in the results of the victory. This diffi- 
culty, too, is slowly passing. When all these hin- 



70 



Lectures on Revelation. 



drances shall have passed away, and when God's 
people shall have come into their own as His co- 
workers, then the rider on the white horse shall go 
forth, followed by the armies of heaven on white 
horses, and the last eventful campaign of the war 
of conquest shall open, in which the world is to be 
brought to the feet of Him who is King of kings 
and Lord of lords. An angel standing in the sun 
calls upon all the fowls of heaven to gather to- 
gether to the feast, when they can feed on the flesh 
of kings, captains, and mighty men, as well as on 
their horses, and on men of every class and degree. 
But we must not understand this to be a real war 
in which men and horses are to be slain, but a 
bloodless war, carried on by the sword of the Spirit, 
w T hich is the word of God, and in which not men, 
but evil principles and evil doctrines and practices 
are to be slain and put out of the way. 



LECTURE VII. 



We now come to the twentieth chapter. This 
chapter gives the beginning, progress, and comple- 
tion of the Millennial period, the falling away 
after the release of Satan, the resurrection and 
general judgment, and the final and everlasting 
separation of good and evil. 

It will be well here to make some observations 
in regard to the state of things at the opening of 
the Millennial Age, and to note a few other mat- 
ters relative thereto. We may, it seems to me, 
gather very properly from what we have passed 
over in the interpretation of this book, that, just 
before the ushering in of this wonderful time, the 
whole world will have become nominally Christian. 
Mohammedanism, Catholicism, Heathenism, Mor- 
monism, and all other grossly erroneous religious 
systems will have been so far overcome by the light 
of God's truth, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, 
that they will be no longer a menace to the church. 
And all the abominable social and moral evils that 
now curse and corrupt mankind will have become 
so unpopular and heinous in the eyes of the mass 
of the people that they can no longer dominate 
society. And real Christian education will have 
reached such a height, and become such a power 
for good, that its benign influence will be felt as a 
power indeed in all departments of life. Then also 
civil liberty, the birthright of every people, will 
have so completely displaced all forms of tyranny 
and misgovernment that the nations of the earth 
will be in the fittest possible state for the coming 
of the kingdom. Also w r e may feel sure that the 
principles of arbitration among nations, now at 
work in all civilized parts of the earth, will have 
virtually dispensed with wars, and brought about 
such a state of peace and amity among all the 



72 Lectures on Revelation. 



peoples of the world that it may be said that the 
brotherhood of man is in sight. And, again, the 
times of the gentiles will have been so far ful- 
filled that the way will be open for God's ancient 
people, the seed of Abraham, to go back to the 
Holy Land and inherit their own again. And once 
more, the different denominations of evangelical 
Christianity will have reached such a state of good 
feeling, and such a burning desire to discard all 
human creeds and party lines, and get still more 
closely together, that the way will be open for a 
great general congress of Christians to adjust all 
matters of difference and get back at last on the 
good old platform of God's eternal truth. 

Now what are we to understand by the angel 
coming down from heaven and chaining the devil 
in the bottomless pit for a thousand years ? I take 
this to be a literal act of divine power banishing 
the evil one and all his fallen angels, so that they 
can not exert their influence any more on mankind ; 
for Satan and his angels are all under the abso- 
lute control of God. But it has been the will of 
God to permit these evil beings, ever since the fall 
of man, to do their bad work, under certain re- 
straints, among men. And they constitute, as 
Paul says, "the power of the air." Eph. 2 : 2. 
That is, they constitute a mighty army or power 
in the atmosphere of our earth, over which Satan 
himself is the prince or king. But as the waves 
of the sea, they can go so far and no farther. And 
when it pleases God to withdraw His permission 
of their evil work among men, He has nothing to 
do but to speak the word and Satan and all his 
legions of bad spirits are bound and sealed in the 
pit. Some hold the opinion that the world will 
Anally reach such a state of righteousness under 
the ordinary influences of Christianity that the 
binding of Satan will be only apparent and not 



Satan in Chains. 



73 



real. But we have nothing in all the past history 
of the world of mankind, and of the church of 
God in the world, to justify this opinion. I know 
of no time or place in the past, and I know of no 
locality of any note at the present time, but that 
the poAver of evil has been or is in the ascendancy. 
God has ever worked, and still does work, in the 
realm of His kingdom on earth, through the instru- 
mentality of men. And men, at their best, under 
all dispensations, are imperfect, and susceptible 
more or less to the wiles of the devil. And this 
will be thus till that time comes when God's laws 
will be written in men's hearts, and when one will 
not have to say to another, "Know^ the Lord," for 
all shall know Him from the least to the greatest, 
and the knowledge of God shall cover the earth as 
the waters cover the sea. But the time of which 
we have just spoken can never come under present 
conditions. For instance, take our own South- 
land to-day, where you will find the purest type of 
Christianity the world has ever seen since the apos- 
tolic age, and where the conditions for its spread 
and dissemination are better, perhaps, than any 
others the world over, and how do vou find it? 
Take the census of any State, county, or precinct; 
any city, town, or village, and you will find the 
non-Christians in the majority, and evil in one 
shape or another in the ascendancy. And this is 
the case, even, under the very best circumstances, 
where good Christian influences seem to predomi- 
nate, where Sunday School bells ring every Sun- 
day morning, and church bells call the people to 
divine worship twice every Sabbath day. When 
all has been done that can be done under present 
conditions, it is all that Christianity can do to hold 
its own, and still the world musters the larger 
army. And one of the saddest parts of all is that 
in the church of this time there are many like the 



74 



Lectures on Revelation. 



mixed multitude that followed Israel from Egypt, 
who were in Israel but not of Israel. So when the 
world blows its trumpet to gather its hosts to the 
pastimes and the pleasures of the flesh, many whose 
names are on our church books are seen in the 
front ranks even, and sometimes carrying the ban- 
ners of the evil one. 

So there must be a radical change, a change that 
will not affect the fruit of the tree only, but the 
tree itself, root, body, and branch. The power of 
the devil must not be curtailed, but destroyed. 
His influence over mankind must not be restrained 
only, but annihilated. He must not be allowed to 
take refuge in the dry places of the earth, but ban- 
ished completely from the earth, and bound and 
sealed in the pit. 

Then the good influences of the gospel, and all 
other good influences that flow from genuine Chris- 
tian civilization will have free course, and be glori- 
fied. The streams of good, no longer blocked by 
obstructions, will flow on as ever-increasing pow- 
ers in accomplishing the will of God in the salva- 
tion of the world. Then as a certain writer has 
said, "God will no longer have to elect men to enter 
His kingdom, but men, moved by their better judg- 
ment, uninfluenced by external evil, will elect them- 
selves to be His followers, through the ever present 
influence of the good Spirit." 

And in the fourth verse it says: "And I saw 
thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment 
was given unto them ; and I saw the souls of them 
that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for 
the word of God, and which had not worshiped the 
beast, neither his image, neither had received his 
mark upon their foreheads or in their hands; and 
they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand 
years." This seems to be a plain reference to, or 
rather a fulfillment of Dan. 7 : 26, 27 : "But the 



Satan in Chains. 



75 



judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his 
dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the 
end. And the kingdom and dominion, and the 
greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, 
shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most 
High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, 
and all dominions shall serve and obey Him." So 
John saw thrones and they sat upon them. This 
denotes a judgment. But what judgment?, Plainly 
the one spoken of in Daniel, as above, and the one 
mentioned or referred to in this book of Revelation, 
when the kingdoms of this world are to become 
the kingdoms of God and His Christ. "And they 
sat upon them." Who sat upon them? Christ 
and His people, the members of His kingdom both 
on earth and in heaven. "And judgment was given 
unto them." Given unto whom? To Christ and 
His saints against the beast and all the enemies of 
His church which we have seen in this book. The 
time had come when the saints should possess the 
kingdom. Dan. 7 : 22. The souls of them that 
were beheaded for the witness of Jesus here, are 
the same as appeared in chapter 6 : 9, 10, under the 
altar praying God to avenge their blood on them of 
the earth who had killed them. They were told to 
wait till their brethren, who should be likewise put 
to death, should join them. And so now the time 
has arrived in the vision which John saw, and here 
are the souls of all the martyrs of Jesus. And it 
is said they lived and reigned with Christ a thou- 
sand years. And this was said to be the first resur- 
rection. Now what about this resurrection? Is 
it to be a real or a symbolic resurrection? On this 
subject good men differ. But the author of these 
Lectures takes the symbolic side of the question. 
That is, it is not to be a real but an apparent resur- 
rection. None of the dead are spoken of here as 
living and reigning with Christ but the martyrs; 



76 



Lectures on [Revelation. 



and of course the martyrs may be considered the 
best type of Christians. So in the Millennium the 
world will be filled with a class of Christians so 
holy, so zealous, so good and pure, that it will seem 
that all the best of God's holy ones who lived in the 
past have come back to life again. The reign of 
Christ I look upon as a spiritual reign, not a per- 
sonal one. He is to reign through His Holy Spirit 
and His people on earth with no opposition. I base 
my interpretation of an apparent resurrection upon 
the fulfillment of the prophecy in Malachi 4 : 5. 
Here God promised to send Elijah before the com- 
ing of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. 
That day of the Lord had reference to the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem. The Jewish people understood 
this prophecy as to be fulfilled by the real return 
of Elijah. Matt. 17 : 10. But Jesus taught them 
that it was fulfilled by the coming of John the Bap- 
tist. Matt. 17 : 11, 12, 13. Now as that Scripture 
was fulfilled in the coming of John the Baptist, 
who was a man of like character and like work 
with Elijah, so this in Revelation may likewise be 
fulfilled by good people living in the world of like 
character and like principles with the martyrs. 

It will be well now to give some observations in 
regard to the Millennial period. First as to its 
nature. It will be preeminently Christian. Re- 
ligion will be the chief concern of all the people. 
Everything else will be subordinate to that. The 
church will be the first and all-important institu- 
tion. Christian love and harmony will prevail in 
absolute perfection. Peace will flow as a river. 
All arts, sciences, and literatures will be so many 
means of advancing the joys and pleasures of re- 
ligion. The home, the school, the shop, the store, 
the factory will be conducted on the highest and 
best principles of religion; for Christ and His 
people will reign supreme. Court-houses, jails, 



Satan in Chains. 



77 



penitentiaries, and all penal institutions will be 
abolished, or changed into places of altogether dif- 
ferent uses. 

And again, medical science and sanitary condi- 
tions will have reached such a state of perfection 
that human life will be wonderfully lengthened. It 
will be a rare thing for the young to die. The 
people will have learned to raise children on hy- 
gienic principles. They will know how to eat and 
drink for their good ; and the world will be blessed 
with vast multitudes of happy old people, who see 
around them their children and children's children 
to the fourth and fifth generations. Most of the 
diseases that kill out the people now will have 
been mastered or eliminated. Churches, Sunday 
Schools, and educational institutions of all grades 
will fill the country with their blessings, spiritual, 
moral, and intellectual. Children will be under 
none but the best of Christian influences, and so 
will be converted in early life, and, so to speak, 
step from the cradle into the kingdom of heaven. 
Implements of war will be seen only in museums 
along with other curiosities. Great battleships 
will have gone out of use, and been converted into 
more peaceful craft. The very heavens will smile 
with a sweeter serenity, the birds sing with a glad- 
der melody, and the flowers bloom with a more 
heavenly glory. And again, the population of the 
world will increase to such an extent that we can 
have no conception of it under present conditions. 
The science of agriculture, drainage, and irrigation 
will reach such perfection that the valleys, the 
hills, the swamps that were, and even the desert 
will blossom as the rose, and wave with luxuriant 
crops of all that is useful to man and beast. Places 
where now miasma reeks and sheds its baleful in- 
fluence to poison the air, will have been so changed 
as to be filled with happy homes, prosperous farms, 



78 



Lectures on [Revelation. 



and blessed with a salubrious climate. And even 
the vast and burning desert, where nothing but 
death seems to reign supreme, will be so changed 
by principles of irrigation, of which we know noth- 
ing now, as to be filled with the richest farms and 
beautiful, shady homes, dotted with cities, towns, 
and villages, and crossed by numerous railroads 
over which rushing trains move a hundred miles an 
hour, where now the slow camel plods his weary 
way. 

To all these things the signs of the times are 
now pointing so plainly that all who will may see 
them. And the world of mankind is now moving 
towards this wonderful goal with a rapidity that 
is astonishing to us at the present time. But, like 
the comet, as it approaches the sun, that rapidity, 
in a few more generations, will have so increased 
as to be nearing the good time of which we are 
here writing. 

Now as to the time of the duration of the Mil- 
lennial period. It says a thousand years. But 
this is a book of symbols. We have seen that three 
years, and forty-two months had to be reduced to 
days, and then these days represented years. Now 
suppose we reduce these thousand years to prophet- 
ical days, allowing three hundred and sixty days 
to a year, and we will have 360,000 years. At any 
rate I like to take the thousand years to be a large 
definite number for a still larger indefinite number. 
This seems more likely to be true, not only because 
it appears more reasonable, but also because it 
agrees better with some of the implied teachings 
of Scripture. On the ground of reason and of 
Scripture, too, we will note this. In Isa, 53 : 11 
we read: "He shall see of the travail of his soul 
and shall be satisfied." I understand that to mean 
that in the general wind up of the affairs of this 
world Christ shall see the results of His atoning 



Satan in Chains. 



79 



death and shall be satisfied. It don't seem reason- 
able that the Lord could be satisfied on seeing that 
Satan, the enemy of God and man, has, in the end, 
the lion's share. But, says one, it has always been 
the case so far. Yes, but God works slowly, at least 
that is the way it looks to us. And so, in His deal- 
ings with the human race, He moves slowly, but, in 
the final result, His works and plans are always 
seen to be glorious. Take the case of Abraham 
and his promised posterity. Abraham was told to 
leave his native land and journey into a land that 
should be shown him. Gen. 12 : 1. And, said the 
Lord, I will make of thee a great nation. Abra- 
ham obeyed, being seventy-five years old, and with 
not a child in the world. Time passed on. At 
last Abraham is about one hundred years old and 
then Isaac is born. Many more years pass away 
before Jacob is born, the third in the line. Then 
at last the twelve patriarchs appear, and all with 
Jacob go down into Egypt. There they remain 
under various changes of fortune for two or three 
hundred years. At last a start is made to the land 
of Canaan that had been promised to Abraham 
and his seed four hundred and thirty years before. 
Then, instead of going directly to the promised 
land from Egypt, forty more years are spent on the 
way. But in the end it all turned out for the best. 
Notice again how long it was from the promise, 
that was made to poor Adam and Eve in the Gar- 
den of Eden, of the seed that should bruise the 
serpent's head, till that promise was fulfilled in 
the Babe of Bethlehem. So in the redemption of 
the world of mankind God's work is slow but sure. 
And taking our interpretation of the period of the 
Millennial Age as continuing for a very, very long 
time, in which under such favorable conditions as 
we have tried to depict on another page, we may 
be enabled to see that in the final day of judgment 



80 Lectures on Revelation. 



the saved will constitute a vast majority. And 
then Satan with the beast and the false prophet, 
and all whose names were not in the book of life 
from the foundation of the world, will be but a 
small party in the comparison. 

"But the rest of the dead lived not again until 
the thousand years were finished." This means 
that during this glorious period no people will live 
on the earth like those bad men who killed the mar- 
tyrs. And does it not seem strange that at the 
end of this glorious age of blessings, Satan should 
be released and permitted to deceive the nations 
again? Or does it not seem that these good times 
would last forever? But no, God knows best. 
But, really, can we see, on close examination into 
the matter, any reason why this change should be? 
Let us try. 

In order to clear up the matter we will have to 
go back to fundamentals, God's moral and intel- 
ligent creatures, as men and angels, must worship 
and serve Him of their own accord. In other 
words, they must have that free agency that en- 
ables them to serve Him freely without constraint. 
God could not of course accept any other service. 
Now the ability or capacity to obey and serve 
freely implies the ability and capacity not to obey 
or serve. Then, so far as we can see, the possi- 
bility of evil is and always will be a necessity. 
And so God wants His creatures, who are endowed 
with moral natures and intelligence, as well as 
freedom to serve voluntarily, to learn by expe- 
rience or observation, or both, the real nature of 
evil and the awful consequences that it entails 
upon those sinning, and, as in the case of man, of 
their posterity. But intelligent moral beings who 
have no knowledge of evil at all, either by expe- 
rience or observation, are and will be, so long as 
that is the case, in danger of falling into sin. This 



Satan in Chains. 



81 



is proved by the experience of the past. For in- 
stance, take the case of the pure and holy angels 
whom God created in heaven. Some of them, at a 
time we know not when, left their first estate 
( Jude 6 ) and abode not in the truth ( John 8:44), 
and so disobeyed or rebelled and brought the awful 
consequences of evil upon themselves. And the 
elect angels, who fell not, have had such a lesson 
through observation that there never will be the 
least danger of their fall. The knowledge they 
have received of the nature and consequences of 
evil will forever hold them on the side of safety. 
Thus evil had its birth in heaven, if we understand 
aright ; but it and all who were concerned in it were 
quickly banished thence. Jesus said, "I beheld 
Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Luke 
10 : 18. 

And in the inscrutable wisdom of God, it 
pleased Him, that, when man was created on this 
earth of ours, these same fallen angels, being now T 
thoroughly evil themselves, should be permitted to 
come and tempt them through their lying misrep- 
resentations. Adam and Eve had no knowledge of 
evil, and there was, so far as we know r , no way for 
them and their posterity to have that knowledge 
but by experience. This is seen by Eve's being so 
easily deceived on being told that if she would eat 
of the forbidden tree she would be able to know 
good and evil. She naturally thought that evil was 
something far better than anything that God had 
granted her in all His goodness. And so she fell 
and Adam fell, and in them the whole human race ; 
and dire was the fall. Poor Eve learned what evil 
was, but it was costly knowledge ; and all their pos- 
terity have learned the same sad lesson by sad 
experience as well as by observation. Now when 
poor, fallen, human beings are saved through the 
atoning blood of Christ, as all will be who obey 
6 



82 



Lectures on Revelation. 



Him ( Heb. 5:9), and are finally delivered from all 
the dreadful effects of sin and are safe in heaven, 
there never will be any danger of their fall, not 
because they can not, but because of the lessons 
they have learned through sad experience. 

And it seems to be the will of God that men and 
angels shall have one more dreadful manifesta- 
tion of the deep wickedness of Satan and his 
angels, and of the awful consequences of evil when 
let loose on a happy world, and of the dire punish- 
ment which sin deserves, by loosing the evil one 
from his confinement and permitting him to go 
forth to deceive the nations once more. This is to 
be the last lesson on that subject. And that the 
lesson may be supremely effective, it comes imme- 
diately after a long and happy period of peace and 
joy unalloyed, and just before the final and ever- 
lasting separation of good and evil. So at the 
close of the happy period of the Millennial Age, 
the flood gates of sin and all kinds of evil prac- 
tices are to be let loose on the world of mankind. 
The zeal of Christians will begin to cool. Worldly- 
mindedness will again become common; and the 
rising generation will drift away from the good old 
times into the dashing and flashing new ways of 
ever increasing sinful pleasures. The beast will 
return with all his deceivableness ; the false 
prophet with all his lying wonders. Religion will 
be corrupted and counterfeited. Hypocrisy and 
deceit will again walk the earth in all their gaudy 
vileness. The very mother of abominations will 
seem to have come back with all her filthiness and 
shame. The devil will go forth with great rage, to 
deceive the nations and gather them together 
against the beloved city, or the true church, as the 
sand of the sea. And when it will appear to the 
few who shall be praying for deliverance, that the 
evil is going to swallow up the good forever, then, 



Satan in Chains. 



83 



when the wicked least expect it, the trump of judg- 
ment will sound long and loud, and the earth will 
tremble from pole to pole, and the righteous dead 
shall Avake from their sleep, and the righteous liv- 
ing shall be changed in a moment, and all caught 
up to meet their coming Lord in the clouds of 
heaven surrounded by all His holy angels. And 
then when a mighty shriek goes up from a lost 
world, the fire of God shall descend upon the 
wicked, as in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, 
and the world shall be w T rapped in devouring 
flames. Soon the wicked, likewise, shall rise from 
their fiery graves and ascend to the Great White 
Throne of judgment. There, with the devil and his 
angels and the beast and the false prophet, shall 
these stand in judgment, and hear the awful sen- 
tence: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlast- 
ing fire." 



LECTURE VIII. 



At the beginning of the twenty-first chapter we 
are introduced to the happy abode of the true 
church in the spirit world. The affairs of this 
earth have been wound up, as we saw in the last 
chapter. Evil, in every sense of the word, has been 
put away forever and ever. God's true followers 
will never see, or feel, or even hear of it any more. 
The separation of good and evil is complete and 
eternal. Evil has served its purpose. Men and 
angels have learned the needed lesson. And the 
reward of each worker in the great drama of life 
has been received, whether good or bad. The cur- 
tain has fallen on the side of the lost, and the vision 
on that score has closed. But so far as the church 
of Christ is concerned, the vision opens afresh and 
with more resplendent glory. The marriage of the 
Lamb and His bride has taken place. The bride, 
the church, is displayed as a great city whose glory 
and beauty are inexpressible. Jesus told His dis- 
ciples that he was going away to prepare a place 
for them ; and that He would come again and take 
them to that place. John 14 : 2, 3. The place has 
now been prepared, as seen by John in the vision, 
and Christ has come and taken His people to that 
place. That is, John was permitted to see heaven, 
symbolically represented, as it is to be after the 
final judgment day. Now let us look upon and 
consider this place, the home of the blessed, in 
heaven. 

"A new heaven and a new earth." I understand 
by this, that John saw that everything was new, 
that is, not like it formerly was. The heaven here 
denotes what was seen above, the heavens over our 
heads. It was new. No longer changeable, but 
with one eternal blaze of the richest and most 
pleasing glory. No longer bedimmed with clouds 



The New Jerusalem. 



85 



and fogs, but clear and bright forever. No longer 
traversed by storm clouds, no longer shocked by 
the red lightning's flash and the dread thunder's 
roar, but always calm and peaceful in its smiling 
beauty. 

"A new earth." That is, as all was new above, so 
all was new beneath. The ground, so to speak, was 
not clay, mud, slush, or dust; nor was its pave- 
ments of stone or concrete, but of gold clear as 
crystal. "And there was no more sea." This old 
earth of ours needs the sea. It furnishes the water 
to the clouds which they pour down upon the earth 
in rains to make it bud and bring forth food for 
man and beast. It is the source of life, in one 
sense, to all living. Then it freshens and helps to 
purify the atmosphere. But in the spirit world we 
will need no material water nor material food, and 
heaven's atmosphere needs no purifying. "And I 
saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down 
from God out of heaven." To the ancient Jews, 
Jerusalem was the city of their love and devotion. 
It was to them the holy city. Their God was there 
in His temple on the mercy seat between the cheru- 
bims in the holy of holies. And to all Christians of 
every age and country Jerusalem is the mos.t holy 
of all cities or localities, not only because of its 
associations with David, Solomon, and the 
prophets, but still more on account of its associa- 
tions with Jesus the Christ, and Him crucified. To 
all of God's people Jerusalem is the religious cen- 
ter of the world, and the cross of Christ is the cen- 
ter of the Bible, and of the history of mankind. 
So in reference to this widespread love and devo- 
tion, that is and always will be felt by the church 
of God toward the Jerusalem on earth, the home 
prepared for them in the new world is called the 
New Jerusalem. Then again, the J erusalem of old 
was the place of the gathering together of God's 



86 



Lectures on JRevelation. 



people, especially at the great feast of the Pass- 
over. And it was there that Jesus ate the last 
passover and established the Lord's Supper, and 
said that He would drink no more of that fruit of 
the vine till he drank it new with them in His 
Father's kingdom. Matt. 26 :29. So here in the 
New Jerusalem we see the Christ, who is our pass- 
over, at the great and general gathering together of 
all the redeemed, where he will drink with them 
the wine of love and communion forever and ever. 
After speaking of the place, John then has some 
beautiful things to say of the people who dwell in 
it. He says that the tabernacle of God is with men 
and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His 
people and He will be their God. The Israelites of 
old were, in a sense, God's people, and He was 
their God ; but it was with much difficulty on God's 
part, and with many ups and downs on theirs. But 
now in this new and beautiful Jerusalem, the con- 
ditions are to be different. The true Israel will 
be God's people in spirit and in truth. Their ini- 
quities will all be washed away in the blood of the 
Lamb. Nothing can ever any more come between 
the Lamb and His people to mar their peace and 
harmony. "And God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes." This is a familiar figure based 
on a mother wiping the tears from the eyes of her 
child. But, though comforted for the present by 
those tender caresses, those tears may have to flow 
again and again. But God removes the tears from 
the eyes of his children by taking away all cause of 
tears finally and forever. Sin is the fundamental 
cause of tears. And, as in heaven, all sin will have 
been taken away, there can never be any more 
tears. "And there shall be no more death." Death, 
in this world, has universal sway. All things in 
the animal and vegetable kingdoms have to suc- 
cumb to its power. It floats on every breeze, and 



The New Jerusalem. 



87 



is perched on every flower. It is written on the 
dimples of the infant, and on the radiant blushes 
of the bride, as well as on the gray hairs and wrin- 
kles of old age. As the slave once sat in the chariot 
of the Roman general on his triumphal entry into 
the seven-hilled city, and kept repeating the sad 
words, "Remember, thou art but a man," so grim 
death sits by us here in all the affairs of life, in 
the gilded palace of wealth, as well as in the lowly 
hovel of poverty, and repeats over and over again, 
"Remember, thou must die." Death to-day, as a 
mighty king, sits on his gruesome throne of skulls, 
surrounded by his paraphernalia of coffins, shrouds 
and hearses, in his palace of tombstones, graves, 
and crystallized tears, where sighs and groans are 
forever heard, intermingled with the sad and dole- 
ful music of the requiem — "Dust to dust, ashes to 
ashes." 

But before we reach the vision John here saw, 
death will have been dethroned and destroyed by 
the resurrection of the dead, and he himself will 
have been cast into the lake of fire. So, then, in 
that beautiful world to which w r e are going, there 
will be no more death. No more fear and dread 
of death. No more breaking up of homes and 
home ties. No more funerals, with their sad pro- 
cessions. No more graveyards and cemeteries, 
where the mound hides the forms we so much 
loved, and which we long so much to see again, and 
where we in our love place flowers and white peb- 
bles besprinkled w T ith tears. 

"Neither sorrow." Sorrow is another one of the 
sad fruits of sin. It and its twin sister, grief, are 
the heritage more or less of every human heart in 
this life. It is so often seen in the sad face, the 
tear-dimmed eye, and the black habiliments of 
mourning. It is heard so often in the suppressed 
sigh that heaves the breast, in the irrepressible 



88 



Lectures on Eevelation. 



groan, and in the tremulous voice of the sorrowing. 
And as people grow older, the burden of sorrow 
becomes heavier and more grievous by frequent 
additions to its already crushing weight. But in 
heaven the fount of sorrow will be dried up. There 
can be no cause for sorrow and grief there. The 
sweet peace and joy of the inhabitant of heaven 
can never be alloy ed by the touch of sorrow. Noth- 
ing can ever happen there to even throw the slight- 
est shadow over the smiling face. Such things can 
never pass the gates of pearl. "Nor crying." Cry- 
ing had its origin in the very precincts of Eden. 
When Adam and Eve turned their backs on that 
once happy home, the place where they first met 
and loved each other, the place where they had 
spent so many happy days walking hand in hand 
through the beautiful bowers and by the sparkling 
streams, and saw that they were being driven out 
from things so lovely and so dear, into the cold, 
sin-cursed world — how they cried! The fountain 
of tears was then opened for the first time. It 
reached its climax with our first parents, when 
Abel's body was found cold in death, and Cain 
had to be banished from home as a vagabond. 
This fountain of tears, or crying, was sanctified 
when " Jesus wept." It will be taken away when 
we reach the Eden above, and drink of the beauti- 
ful river of life, and eat of the rediscovered tree of 
life. And it w r ill give place to the never-ceasing 
song of Moses and the Lamb. 

"Neither shall there be any more pain." Pain 
is the venom of sin — the poison of the old serpent. 
We are born in pain, we live in pain m|ore or less 
all the days of our lives, and we die in pain. "The 
sting of death is sin." In other words, pain is the 
penalty of a violated law — the curse of the law. 
We as sinners can never be freed from pain till we 
are absolutely saved body and soul from sin, and 



The New Jerusalem. 



89 



made the righteousness of God in Christ." Jesus 
Himself suffered the pain that was due His people, 
and so in heaven they will be sinless forever, and 
as such, free from pain forevermore. 

"For the former things are passed away." The 
former things here mean the things we are passing 
through now in this poor, sinful world and as poor, 
sinful creatures. This old body of flesh will have 
passed away. We will have spiritual bodies. Our 
old animal natures with all their appetites and 
passions and wants will be gone forever. The 
cares, trials, hardships, troubles and anxieties of 
this life will be no more. In fact, I know of noth- 
ing we shall carry from this life to the next, except 
our Christian love and fellowship. We will simply 
be God's children filled with love to Him and to 
one another, and supremely happy in this love, and 
fully contented with what our common Father 
gives in His goodness. 

We now come to the Holy City, the bride, the 
Lamb's wife. This is a symbolic representation of 
the church in glory, after its final completion. All 
God's people from the beginning of this world to 
the end thereof are seen in one body in the vision, 
just as it will be after the resurrection and judg- 
ment day. This body of the saved is here repre- 
sented as a city, a most beautiful city. In some 
places in the New Testament it is given under the 
figure of a temple, I Cor. 3 : 16, 17. Also as a 
building, I Cor. 3:9; II Cor. 5 : 1. Here in these 
Scriptures Solomon's temple seems to have been in 
the mind of the writer, as a figure after the pattern 
of which the holy spiritual temple of the church 
is built. For in Solomon's temple every stone and 
every piece of timber was thoroughly squared, or 
shaped and prepared to fit exactly into its place, 
before it was even brought to the locality of the 
building. This was done by the master builder, 



90 Lectures on Revelation. 



who knew his business so well and who had his 
plan so completely in mind that he could, in his 
mind, see the completed temple before a single 
foundation stone was put in place. And again, 
these stones, or component parts of the temple, 
were a long timie in the process of preparation, and 
many hands and many kinds of implements were 
used in perfecting that preparation. So it is in 
the spiritual temple, or the church of God. Each 
individual one of God's people is fitted and pre- 
pared for his place in the finished temple in heaven 
while living here in this life. 

The Master Builder is infinite in wisdom and 
power, and so understands perfectly His plans, 
and knows how to deal with each one of us here so 
that we will fit exactly into our places in the 
heavenly building. All things we are made to pass 
through in this life are the means of our prepara- 
tion. So Paul wrote, "AH things work together 
for good to them that love God." Rom. 8 :28. 

Again, the church is represented as a body, 
under the similitude of the human body. I Cor. 
12 :27. Christ is the head of this body, and each 
one of His people is a member thereof. 

But here in this twenty-first chapter, we have the 
church of Jesus Christ in its final glorified state 
given under the similitude of a city. And that city 
is called Jerusalem, because the Jerusalem on 
earth was the city in which God dwelt in olden 
times in His temple and among His people. And 
also it was the place where Christ the Lamb pur- 
chased the redemption of His people on the cross, 
and where His church was first established on 
earth. So the name is extremely appropriate. 

John's description of this city, or the bride, the 
Lamb's w r ife, reaches the utmost limit of human 
comparison. It is a veritable ne plus ultra, that is, 
a thing beyond which there is nothing more. A 



The New Jerusalem. 



91 



city of gold and precious stones with gates of pearl 
is the most beautiful, the most costly, and the most 
glorious city that can be presented to the human 
mind. There can be nothing beyond. But after 
all, this glorious representation is a figure, a sym- 
bol of the reality. Heaven is a spiritual place. We 
will be spiritual beings there. Christ is in His 
glorified spiritual body, the angels are spirits. 
God is a Spirit, There is no place or use for mate- 
rial things there, not even the most precious. For, 
as we can have no idea as to what our spiritual 
bodies will be, so we can have no definite idea as to 
what the heavenly or spiritual home will be. 
Earth's best is gold, pearls, and gems. But 
heaven's best is infinitely beyond these. And when 
prophets have written all they can write in human 
language, and when poets have reached the highest 
flights of human imagination in song, and when 
orators have exhausted all metaphor and simile, 
still the half has never been told. 

And it is said that the city had no need of the 
sun or the moon to shine in it ; for the glory of God 
did enlighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. 
There will be no need of material light in that 
world of spiritual creatures. Nor can the eternal 
things of heaven ever need anything so temporal 
and perishable as sun, moon, and stars. All things 
there must be perfect, unchangeable, and eternal. 

"And there shall be no night there," verse 25. 
This suggests a beautiful thought. The poet has 
said: 

" Night is the time for rest. 

How sweet, when labors close, 
To gather round the aching breast 
The curtain of repose." 

But in heaven there will be no "aching breast/' 
no tiresome labors, no weary limbs, and no need of 



92 



Lectures on Revelation. 



repose. Hence, no need of night. Here the poor, 
frail body tires. And every part of our being is so 
closely related to the body of flesh, they all tire. 
The limbs, the muscles, the nerves, the brain, and 
even the immortal mind, thinking through mortal 
organs, all become tired and need rest. But in the 
spirit world there can be no such thing as being 
tired. Perfect spiritual natures know no weari- 
ness, no decay, hence they need no rest, no recu- 
peration. 

All through these last two chapters, the Lord 
stops now and then to speak a word of warning, 
or of exhortation to those who should read this 
book. These solemn admonitions are given to show 
us that nothing that is evil, or abominable, or false, 
shall ever enter into these holy places, or enjoy 
these happy privileges. None but the holy can live 
in a holy heaven. None but the blood-washed can 
be holy. None but those who obey and follow the 
Lamb can be blood-washed. "They have washed 
their robes and made them white in the blood of 
the Lamb. We sing: 

"What can take away my sin? 
Nothing but the blood of Jesus." 

So, then, none but the pure in heart, none but 
those whose names are in the book of life from the 
foundation of the world can enter into and inherit 
all these things. The supreme question for each 
one is, then, "Is my name written there ?" 

Jesus said: "Rejoice not that the spirits are sub- 
ject to you, but rejoice rather that your names are 
written in heaven." 

The twenty-second, or last, chapter opens with 
this : "And he showed me a pure river of water of 
life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne 
of God and of the Lamb." Jesus spoke of the 



The New Jerusalem. 



93 



water of life. He told the woman of Samaria that 
whosoever should drink of the water that he should 
give, should never thirst; but that the water he 
should give would be in him a well, or spring, of 
water, and continuing in him. John 4 :14. Here 
Jesus represents true religion in the heart, as liv- 
ing water, that is, a spring of fresh water bubbling 
up and flowing as a perpetual fountain, making 
glad the heart of its possessor, and blessing all 
around. 

So in this life and in this world the water 
of life is as a little spring in the heart of each one 
of God's people. But in heaven it is spoken of as 
a river. And this river, it is said, flows from the 
throne of God and the Lamb, showing that the 
source of eternal life is God the Father and God 
the Son. This river shows the abundance of the 
water of life in heaven, as contrasted with the 
spring in the heart here. Jesus speaks of the 
abundant life (John 10:10) that He gives to them 
who come to Hirt^. This enlarges the idea ex- 
pressed in the term river. For it is the nature of a 
river to have a small beginning and to go on its 
way ever increasing in width, in depth, and in 
power. 

Then we are told that on each side of this river 
of life was there the tree of life. Our first intro- 
duction to the tree of life was in the Garden of 
Eden. The object of this tree seemed to be to per- 
petuate the life of him who should eat of it. But 
after man became a sinner it was not best for him 
to live forever in that state, and so he was debarred 
that tree by the flaming sword of the angel, and so 
was permitted to die, that through death, and espe- 
cially the death of the second Adam, there might 
yet be an everlasting life. So, when here we find 
this eternal life verified in all its fullness, in the 
heavenly Eden, the tree of life again appears 



94 Lectures on Revelation. 



standing on both sides of the river of life, and all 
the way along its banks, denoting its perpetual 
life-sustaining power. 

"And there shall be no more curse." Verse 3. 
We all know from sad experience the effects of the 
curse that fell upon all things earthly when sin 
first entered. Before that unfortunate hour earth 
was a paradise. Love and peace spread their 
sunny wings over mountain, hill, and valley. The 
heavens above smiled in love upon all the new and 
joyous scenes of this world. The rising sun was 
greeted with happy songs in the morning, and all 
through the day his light and genial warmth shed 
blessings upon things animate and inanimate. By 
night the silvery moon and twinkling stars made 
the darkness beautiful. The murmuring brooks, 
the blooming flowers, the singing birds, and the 
rustling leaves, all seemled to blend into the uni- 
versal harmony of peace, love, and joy. 

But when Eve reached forth her hand and took 
the forbidden fruit and ate : 

"Earth felt the wound, and Nature, from her seat, 
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe, 
That all was lost." 

And thus fell the dire curse upon the earth, which 
blighted and still blights all things earthly. It 
mingled gloom with the light, sorrow with joy, 
envy with love, anger with peace, and so made a 
sad mixture of good and evil, as we now find it in 
this world. Sin brought the curse into the world, 
the curse entails countless evils, that end only in 
death. But in the new world to which God's people 
are bound, there is to be no curse. It will be gone 
forever. The effects and the memory of it will be 
alike obliterated. 

Before the curse blighted this earth, God walked 
with man in the midst of the garden, and God and 



The New Jerusalem. 



95 



man held sweet communion together. But after 
the fall, this friendship and mutual communion 
were broken, and there could be no intercourse ex- 
cept through a mediator. In heaven, however, 
where there is to be no more curse, we read that the 
throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it ; and His 
servants shall serve Him. And again, "They shall 
see His face, and His name shall be in their fore- 
heads." "And they shall reign forever and ever." 

Yes, we shall be kings and priests with the Lord 
Jesus and reign with Him. What a change that 
will be from our present condition in this life! 
Here, though we are the sons of God, yet we are 
still under the dominion more or less of many evil 
things. Sin still dwells in our mortal bodies to 
our grief and sorrow. Satan and his evil angels 
still follow and harass us as we pass through his 
kingdom on our way to the celestial city. Though 
they can not destroy us, they give no end of strife 
and worry. This old body of flesh we must drag 
along as a dead body chained to our souls, till it is 
finally laid down at the brink of the river. Here 
it is fight the good fight of faith; there it will be 
reign as more than conquerors through Him that 
loved us and gave Himself for us. 

"We shall reign with Him forever and ever." 
"For the time is at hand." That is, the time when 
all these things will be fulfilled. Then, after the 
great judgment day, he that is unjust will continue 
unjust, and he that is righteous will continue to be 
righteous. There will be no more changes. 

"And behold I come quickly, and my reward is 
with me, to give to every man according as his 
work shall be." As compared to eternity, any 
period of time is short. But in the case of each 
one of us, the time is short, sure enough, because 
He comes, in one sense, at our death. For the 
issues of eternal life or eternal death are virtually 



96 Lectures on Revelation. 



settled when a man dies. Jesus taught that to die 
in one's sins is to be lost forever. John 8 :21. All 
preparation must be made during this life, and our 
common sense tells us the sooner the better. The 
reward here spoken of is, so to speak, the harvest 
which each one will reap in the eternal world, and 
it will be according to his work. The Christian's 
reward will be the harvest that comes from his 
work as a Christian and a servant of Jesus Christ, 
and will be proportionate to his sowing. The 
Christian's reward is all good. His sins were im- 
puted to Jesus, his substitute, and are all put away 
as far as the east is from the west. 

Verse fourteen is one of the most beautiful in 
the whole Bible. "Blessed are they that do His 
commandments, that they may have right to the 
tree of life, and may enter in through the gates 
into the city." The word blessed means happy, that 
is, happy is the state or condition of those who are 
permitted to enter into the city. For within the 
city everything is good. Its very atmosphere is 
love. Its fountains and streams are waters of life. 
Its food is the tree of life. Its light emanates from 
the face of God and the Lamb. Its character is 
holiness. Its music is the everflowing melody of 
heaven's grand oratorio, compared with which 
nothing has ever been heard or conceived of on 
earth. Its language is the common dialect of 
heaven, which has been spoken only there since the 
stars sang together on their natal day. Its com- 
panionship is that of the good of all ages, and the 
holy angels, w r hich had been ministering spirits to 
us on earth. Our work will be to serve God in the 
beauty of holiness by doing His will, which will be 
our will also. All the evil at that time will be 
without the city, in the outer darkness. And there 
will be then between the good in the city and the 
evil outside of the city a great gulf fixed, so that no 



The New Jerusalem. 



97 



passing either way will be possible. The separa- 
tion will be eternal. 

Jesus here calls Himself the root and offspring 
of David, the bright and morning star. As God, 
he was the root, or creator of David. And as man 
he was the offspring of David, having been born of 
David's line, or posterity. "The morning star." 
A morning star always heralds the coming of a 
new day. It shows that the darkness will soon 
pass away and the light will again bless and en- 
liven the earth. After our first parents had sinned, 
a long, dark night fell upon this old sin-cursed 
world of ours. Men groped in darkness. Only 
once in a while a dim light appeared to a prophet 
or a seer. At length, in the fullness of time a star 
was seen by wise men in the east, the star of Beth- 
lehem, That star led the way to the babe of Beth- 
lehem,, the true morning star, to show that the long 
and dreary night w T as about to pass away and give 
place to the day of the kingdom of heaven. That 
day has been slowly passing towards its meridian 
nearly tw r o thousand years. During the Dark 
Ages its sun was almost totally eclipsed by the man 
of sin and his clouds of superstition. In the six- 
teenth century, that eclipse began to pass off grad- 
ually, and the day of the kingdom of heaven has 
been growing brighter ever since. It will reach its 
glorious meridian in the Millennial Age. Then, 
when Satan is released, it will seem to sink again 
behind the mountains of Gog and Magog for 
awhile, only to rise to a still brighter noontide in 
the heavenly Jerusalem' as we see here. 

And now comes our Lord's last loving invitation 
to sinners before the closing of the canon of Scrip- 
ture. He was now on the last and closing chapter 
of his word. And, like a tender mother writing to 
her children, would add just one more sentence 
brimming full of love and sweet affection, so Jesus 

7 



98 



Lectures on Revelation. 



here adds just one more invitation, before bidding 
adieu to the world for which He died, in these 
matchless words : "The Spirit and the bride say 
Come. And let him that heareth say Come. And 
let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, 
let him take the water of life freely." 

The Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit, says Come. 
The Holy Spirit truly invites and woos every one. 
Yes, the Spirit strives with men. This, the Spirit's 
call, is sometimes, as it were, a trumpet call, and 
sometimes a still, small voice. The jailer had the 
trumpet call, Lydia the still, small voice. And this 
call comes to all in many ways and at many times 
during one's life. But by repeated refusals to hear 
the heart grows harder and spiritual ears duller. 
And at last the call may not be heard at all, or the 
Spirit may cease to call. A lady once wished to 
rise every morning at a certain hour. So she 
placed an alarm clock in her room, set to go off at 
that hour. Sure enough, at the time desired the 
faithful clock gave the alarm, This was kept up 
for many days, and as long as the lady obeyed the 
call it was heard plainly. After awhile, however, 
on hearing the warning, she concluded to go to 
sleep again, and after repeating this for several 
days, the warning was heard less and less dis- 
tinctly, till at last it was not heard at all. So with 
the calls of the Spirit. The sinner after awhile 
may sleep on under the loudest calls. I asked a 
hard-hearted old man once, a man who said he had 
no serious thought, if it had always been that way 
with him. His countenance changed at once, and 
he answered sadly in the negative, saying that the 
time had been when it was very different, but he 
would not heed, and his heart grew hard. 

"The bride says Come." The bride is the church. 
And it is pre-eminently true that the church is call- 
ing men, women and children, wherever the gospel 



The New Jerusalem. 



99 



minister proclaims the word. And it is through 
the church that all the many means are used to 
give the word of God to the people, and to dissem- 
inate religious knowledge, and to spread the gospel 
by missionary efforts among all peoples. The mis- 
sion of the church is to call the people of the whole 
world to repentance. The great commission was 
given to the church, and is still binding on every 
individual church and minister and member of the 
kingdom of heaven. 

"And let him that heareth say Come." Each one 
who hears the good news of salvation should tell 
his friends and neighbors, and try to induce them 
to seek a like blessing. When a sick person has 
found a remedy for his disease, he naturally wishes 
others who are sick to have the remedy and be 
cured likewise. When Andrew had found the 
Christ, he sought out his brother Simon and 
brought him to Jesus. John 1 :41, 42. True reli- 
gion in the heart makes one generous. And, more- 
over, it fills one with love for the souls of others. 
Hence the admonition, "Let him that heareth say 
Come." 

"And let him that is athirst come." This world 
furnishes food and drink for our mortal bodies. 
But it has nothing, absolutely nothing, for the 
soul. When the children of Israel were passing 
through the wilderness, God had to feed them, with 
bread from heaven and give them water from the 
rock. And so all men, in a spiritual sense, are 
passing through a dreary wilderness in this life, 
and must have food and drink from heaven or 
perish. The Hebrew r s thirsted and cried for water, 
and God gave them water from the rock at Horeb. 
And Paul says: "That rock was Christ." I Cor. 
10:4. That is, as that rock furnished water for the 
bodies of men, so Christ alone can furnish water 
for the souls of men. When the Israelites thirsted, 



100 



Lectures on Revelation. 



they went to the rock, or the stream flowing from 
the rock. So, when men now thirst spiritually, 
they are here called to come to Jesus, the spiritual 
rock, and drink. It is natural for men to thirst. 
It is the call of the body for the water it must have, 
or it can't perform its functions, and without it, 
sooner or later, must die. And as our bodies need 
water and call for it by a sensation called thirst, 
so our souls need the water of life, and call for it 
by an inward craving of the spirit, or inner man, 
which is here called thirst. Now, as it was the 
duty and the privilege of the Hebrew in the desert 
to come to the water, which God had given, and 
drink, so it is the duty and the high privilege of 
every person to come to the water Christ has fur- 
nished for their souls and drink. It is a duty, be- 
cause if they do not drink, they will die the second 
death, as well as the first ; and it is a privilege, be- 
cause God has provided it in his love, at the cost 
of the death of His Son, and it is without money 
and without price to us. But the trouble is that 
men so often drown this thirst of the soul by the 
insatiate counter-thirst of the mortal body for the 
good things of this poor, fleeting life, that they, by 
neglecting the immortal soul for the mortal body, 
lose both in the end. And the question then arises 
that knows no answer : "What shall it profit a man 
if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own 
soul?" Mark 8:36. "Or what shall a man give in 
exchange for his soul?" And again, men often re- 
sort to other means to quench the soul's thirst than 
that which God has provided. This is because of 
the inborn aversion in our fallen natures to obey 
God. And again, it is because, if one comes to 
Christ, he must deny himself and take up his cross. 
And he must likewise humble himself before God 
and man. This the hum;an heart fights against in 
its stubborn pride, and rebels against in its boasted 



The New Jerusalem. 101 



self-sufficiency. This aversion in the heart of man 
towards God and His commandments has given 
rise to all the forms of false religion, all attempts 
to satisfy the thirst of the soul by so-called good 
works, as well as to all phases of infidelity, and to 
all attacks on the Bible to destroy it, or to pervert 
its meaning. So, then, let him that is athirst come 
and drink and live. 

And now we come to the last of these loving invi- 
tations, and the one that is by far the best. "And 
whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
freely." The first word of hope and encourage- 
ment that was given to man in his fallen and lost 
estate was, The seed of the woman shall bruise the 
serpent's head. That was dark and enigmatical, 
yet it gave a ray of hope and encouragement to 
man in his hopeless desolation. But this last and 
best of all invitations to fallen humanity is clear 
and bright and unmistakable in its meaning. That 
first word has come down through all the genera- 
tions of mankind, being augmented here and there 
by other and fuller words, giving brighter and still 
brighter hope, till here it has reached its full and 
beautiful climax of hope and blessedness. "Who- 
soever will," etc. I think it was Bichard Baxter 
who said that he was so glad that the Lord used 
here that comprehensive word "whosoever." "For," 
said he, "that includes me without a doubt. If," 
said he, "the Lord had said, 'Let Bichard Baxter 
come/ he would have thought it was some other 
Bichard Baxter, and not himself. But as it was, 
there could be no mistake." Whosoever includes 
every one without any possible exception. It in- 
cludes the lowest as well as the highest. The vilest 
as well as the least im'moral. The most highly civ- 
ilized man, as well as the lowest savage in his 
jungle. The people of the most highly favored 
Christian land, as well as the heathen in his blind- 
ness. 



102 



Lectures on Revelation. 



"Whosoever will." Let this glad word sound 
out to the ends of the earth. Let the lost in the 
fashionable world hear it. Let the despairing in 
the slums hear it. Let the prisoner in his dungeon 
hear it. Let heathen nations hear it and rise above 
their superstitions. Let the Mohammedan hear it 
and forsake his false prophet. Let the Roman 
Catholic come and forsake the "man of sin." Let 
all hear and come and take the water of life freely. 
What a wonderful meaning is couched in that little 
word "freely!" It costs nothing. It is without 
money and without price. Hence this beautiful 
language of the prophet Isaiah, as he saw in pro- 
phetic vision, afar off, the blessings of the water of 
life and the bread of life. "Ho, everv one that 
thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath 
no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy 
wine and milk without money and without price." 
Isa. 55 :1. 

One last word. "Surely I come quickly. Amen." 
This is a last warning admonition to urge the 
people to accept the invitations as above given. 
When He comes He wants to find us ready, watch- 
ing and waiting. With some it will be too late 
when He com;es. Death m)ay find us unprepared. 
The trumpet of the judgment day may find us not 
ready. The old world, in the days of Noah, was 
warned. But they heeded not, and the flood came 
and took them all away. Sodom was warned, but 
they would not hear, and the fire of God came 
down upon them and they were consumed in their 
sin. Jerusalem was warned. Jesus wept over it, 
and said: "How often would I have gathered thy 
children together even as a hen gathereth her 
chickens under her wings, and ye would not." 
Matt. 23 :37. But they would not hear, and went 
about to kill Him as they had the prophets before 
Him. And their house was left unto them deso- 



The New Jerusalem. 



103 



late. God gave them up. And when at last the 
awful day of their calamity fell upon them; and 
when the Eoman army had broken down the walls 
and were rushing in upon them with drawn swords, 
they could but die in despair. With them it was 
too late. And so with some now, who will not 
hear, and will not heed, the grieved Spirit leaves 
them to their fate. But let us who read these 
words, hear, believe, and obey, and then we shall 
be permitted to enter into the city and eat of the 
tree of life. Amen. 



SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR 



SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. 



In the early part of the nineteenth century there 
lived a simple farmer in the eastern part of Wake 
County, N. C, at the locality now known as the 
new town of Wendell, on the Norfolk and South- 
ern Eailroad. This man was W. W. Nowell, my 
honored father. He was an humble, unpretentious 
man, and was never known, perhaps, but slightly 
outside of his own county. His education was lim- 
ited to simple reading, poor writing, and a slight 
knowledge of figures. Yet he was a man of good, 
sound mind and fair judgment. He was highly 
respected by all who knew him, as an honest, up- 
right, Christian gentleman. 

This poor farmer, my father, married Miss Eliz- 
abeth Rhodes, daughter of Jeremiah Rhodes, the 
progenitor of nearly all the Rhodeses now in this 
part of our State. 

Soon after the aforesaid marriage, my father 
and his bride, instead of taking a foolish trip to 
some famous part of the world, as many poor 
people do nowadays, concluded to settle down and 
go to work, as all the honest and industrious young 
men did in those far-off days of frugality and con- 
tentment. So he bought about one hundred acres 
of land in the piney woods, selected a suitable place 
on a slight ridge, between two small brooklets, or 
branches, and proceeded to build a house, or rather 
two houses. For in those primitive times, people 
had a living house, or, more correctly, a bed-house, 
and a kitchen, some thirty or fifty feet apart. 
These houses, that is, my father's houses, were very 
simple and unpretentious buildings. They were 
built of logs and covered with boards, four or five 
feet long, rived from the long-leaf yellow pine, that 
was so common at that time and place. The chim- 
neys were of the stick-and-dirt style, but answered 



108 



Sketch of the Author. 



every purpose, and were comfortable with their 
wide fireplaces, wherein oaken logs in winter 
burned and crackled so merrily. The kitchen fire- 
place was still mjore commodious, being so wide 
that the lads and lasses could stand or sit in the 
"corners," as we called them, and have a good time, 
while the kind mother was boiling the pot, hung on 
a potrack, baking corn bread on a griddle that 
turned on a pivot, or biscuits in a "spider," which 
was a small oven with a handle. And sometimes 
in the winter she roasted sweet potatoes in the hot 
embers. 

This particular kitchen of which I am thinking, 
my mother's, was, in my estimation, a dear and 
cozy old place. It stood east and west with the 
chimney at the eastern end. In the corner to the 
left of the fireplace were kept the various cooking 
utensils. And just back of that, near the door, 
some shelves were placed four or five feet from the 
floor, on which the dishes, washed and dried so 
nicely, were placed bottom-side up. In the other 
corner on the same side was the cupboard, or the 
"milk house," as we called it. That was the recep- 
tacle of the milk and butter, and also the cold 
victuals, so convenient between meals. On the 
other side to the right of the fireplace stood the 
spinning wheel, which I can almjost fancy I hear 
now T , singing its humming song, as it was whirling 
so rapidly under my mjother's skillful hands, in 
spinning cotton or wool to be later woven into 
cloth. In the other corner on the south side was 
the old loom, in which cloth was made for the fam- 
ily clothing. Under this old kitchen, also, was a 
cellar to keep potatoes during cold weather instead 
of in a hill. 

The women and children in those days spent the 
day generally in the kitchen. At night, all the 
family gathered in the "other," or the "great," or 



Sketch of the Author. 



109 



the "bed-house," as it was variously called. There, 
a fire was made in winter and in summer. In win- 
ter for light and warmth ; in summer for light only, 
as lamps were then unknown to the simple people 
in the country, and tallow candles were allowed 
only on rare occasions. Here the early hours of 
the night were spent in sweet contentment and hap- 
piness. The father rested quietly from the ardu- 
ous toils of the day, the mother hummed a lullaby 
to the baby, as she rocked the rude cradle with her 
foot and plied the knitting needles with her fingers 
to supply warm socks and stockings for the family 
in cold weather; while the older children prattled 
in their glee, or played blindman's buff, their bare 
feet, in the meantime, keeping up a continual pit-a- 
pat on the naked floor. 

In this aforementioned "great house/' which, 
however, had but one room, on the 27th of April, 
1837, the writer of this poor sketch of a poor life 
first saw the light, Just what he then thought of 
that light, and of himself, and of his strange sur- 
roundings, I am not able to say, as no record there- 
of has come down to these later times. Soon the 
neighbors began to drop in, of course, to see the 
stranger that had just arrived in their midst, and 
to congratulate the parents on this fine addition to 
their growing family, and to examine very closely 
the kicking prodigy himself, and to make such re- 
marks as they saw T fit. But of what was said and 
done then and there, I know nothing at all, except 
that another name was written in the old family 
Bible, and that name was "William Cullen Now- 
ell." I have been asked in these later years of my 
life if I was named for William Cullen Bryant, the 
famous poet. My answer was, that my humble 
parents never heard of the poet Bryant, or of any 
other poet, except David the Psalmist, and perhaps 
Watts, Wesley, and Bippon. Suffice it to say that 



110 



Sketch of the Author. 



I had an uncle of that name that had moved to 
Tennessee before my advent, and I suppose I was 
named for him. In a few weeks, at most, this news 
of the neighborhood died out, as all such ordinary 
news will, and matters and things moved on in the 
same old ruts as before. The family that the 
stranger had come to see and tarry with for a 
season had resumed their wonted duties, and the 
baby kicked, crowed, or bawled, according to his 
various humors and caprices. 

For the next seven years, or thereabouts, that 
little boy increased in weight, if not in wisdom, 
and was said to be a fine, rosy, and thriving lad, 
with comely looks and full of promise. During 
this happy period of my life I can recall but two 
events. One was a visit to our home of my uncle 
Cullen, my namesake. He rode horseback all the 
way from Tennessee, on a large, muscular horse, 
with tremendously big feet. This was a frequent 
topic of conversation in the family circle for the 
next five or six years. The other event was the 
birth of my youngest brother, Robert. 

But during my seventh year, an epidemic of 
scarlet fever raged in our comlmunity, and caused 
widespread alarm and much suffering, and several 
deaths among the children. It soon made its ap- 
pearance in our family, when my two older 
brothers and myself were stricken down. I remem- 
ber the night when I was first taken sick, but I can 
recall no more till several weeks afterwards, when 
m;y mother carried me in her arms to the kitchen, 
when, though convalescent, I was almost a skele- 
ton. During this spell of sickness, I sank so low 
that all hope of recovery was lost. The doctor said 
my death was only a matter of time, and a brief 
time at that. My mother, with her own hands, pre- 
pared some simple clothes for my burial suit. For 
a few days and nights all waited in silence for the 



Sketch of the Author. 



Ill 



death angel to come and take the trembling spirit 
away and let the little, emaciated body rest. But 
God had something for that poor little boy to do in 
the coming years. And so, instead of sending the 
death angel, He rebuked the fever, and lo, a change 
began to come over the little patient, and, in the 
course of some few weeks, he was up and going 
about again, though not the same plump boy as be- 
fore, but weak, pale, and unpromising. 

During the next ten years, I developed about as 
bad a case of bashfulness and diffidence as was 
ever seen, I reckon. This was, in some meaure, due 
to partial deafness caused by the fever. I could 
not bear to be in the company of any but intimate 
friends. So I hardly ever went anywhere, not even 
to school or to church. The very thought of going 
to school would cause my heart almost to stop. 
My parents realized the situation and very readily 
humored me in these things, hoping that a change 
would take place when I grew older. 

During these painful years of deep-rooted timid- 
ity, however, I learned to read and write through 
the kindness of my brothers. But I could not bear 
for any one, even my father, to hear me read. 

During this period of my life, however, I read a 
great deal — in fact, I read everything I could get 
hold of. Books of all kinds then were scarce among 
the simple backwoods people, and newspapers were 
rare also. But we had a few books which my father 
bought from a colporter, among them I still re- 
member "Putnam and the Wolf," and the "Fool's 
Pence." And about this time there came through 
our community a book agent, the first, I reckon, 
who had ever been seen by our people, and my fa- 
ther bought from him a "Pictorial History of the 
World." That was, so to speak, my meat and 
drink for the next two or three years. I read it 
through and through. And the knowledge I gained 



112 



Sketch of the Author. 



from that book lias been a great blessing to me ever 
since. There was published in those days also, in 
the city of Raleigh, a paper known as "The Spirit 
of the Age." I had access to that, too, and read it 
with the greatest zest. In that I found the first 
serial stories I ever saw or heard of, those espe- 
cially written by "Will Willowill." I believed 
every character and every word in these stories to 
be real and truthful. Such a thing as fiction had 
never dawned on my mind then. All this reading I 
did quietly and alone, pronouncing all new and 
strange words after my own taste. And here I 
made some ludicrous mistakes, as I learned later. 
For instance, I knew how T to pronounce promise. 
But about 1850, I frequently read in the aforesaid 
paper about the famous compromise. I very nat- 
urally thought that promise with com before it 
ought to be pronounced the same as without it, and 
so placed the accent on the second syllable. Again, 
the word certain was very familiar and its pro- 
nunciation undoubted. So when I met with that 
word with the prefix as before it, I, of course, let 
the accent remain on the syllable cer. When I 
learned later that other people pronounced these 
words differently, I was horrified at their dense 
ignorance, until I discovered, to my dismay, that 
the ignorance lay at my own door. It may be in- 
teresting to speak here, also, of the habit, if I may 
so call it, of credulity that I formed in my early 
years. I firmly believed every word I read or 
heard. Having been brought up among honest and 
truthful people, I had no idea of anything like de- 
ceit and falsehood. In later years, while at school, 
the boys soon found me possessed of this way of 
thinking and feeling, and so would play on me 
some funny tricks. It took me a long time to learn 
the sad truth, that the world is hollow and deceit- 
ful, and false in a large measure. 



Sketch of the Author. 



113 



I now come to another period of iny life from my 
eighteenth to my twenty-fourth year, extending 
over about six years, which may be considered my 
school days, and also my initial religious life. 
With all my native diffidence, I had a strong thirst 
for an education. And it so happened, about the 
beginning of this period, that Ave had a teacher in 
our school district who was an acquaintance of our 
family, and who boarded at our house. My father 
had, just previous to this, built a new house. This 
house was of hewn logs, covered with shingles, and 
had a substantial rock chimney. It also contained 
three rooms — one main room, one shed room, and 
one little room at the end of the piazza. So I felt 
like I could bear to go to school to him, as he was 
well acquainted with my peculiarities, and knew 
how to humor me. During this term of school, 
which lasted only a few months, I made rapid 
progress. The next year, we had another teacher 
who had lived all his life in our midst, and so I 
went to him. Then my father sent me to another 
school for a few months, in an adjoining district. 
In all I think I got about seven months schooling 
in this way. I then concluded to teach in our old 
home schoolhouse. First, I taught and entered 
school for a few months. Then I was asked to get 
a certificate and take the public school for the next 
term. I stood the examination, got the certificate, 
and taught the public school all right. Several 
others took the examination on the same dav with 
me. Such an examination as we took then w^ould, 
at this time, be considered almost, if not quite, a 
farce. I remember well a sentence in Smith's Eng- 
lish Grammar, which was given us to correct and 
parse. I had learned that grammar pretty well as 
far as syntax. And I had studied this latter part 
of the book very attentively by myself at home. 
And I had paid particular attention to that very 
8 



114 



Sketch of the Author. 



sentence. It was, if I remember rightly, as fol- 
lows: "Him being won or lost, all this will soon 
follow." 

That sentence passed nearly all around the 
room, and all failed on it signally, till it reached 
me. I very readily corrected it and parsed it cor- 
rectly. It was really amusing to hear some of those 
young men try to parse. Some of them made the 
word "won" a numeral. I changed "him" to "he" 
and gave the rule, and parsed, giving all the rules 
or reasons. The examining committee also asked 
us to divide one dollar by one mill. I got that cor- 
rectly and they told me I had it right, and the 
answer was one thousand dollars. I was surprised, 
of course, at what he said was the result. But I 
dared not question what so wise a man should say. 
But now I think he made a very grave mistake, 
as he should have said one thousand mills instead 
of dollars. 

I was now a young man of some importance in 
the community, and of considerable promise. 
Though I was still frail and feeble as to health, 
weighing about 120 pounds, I had so far overcome 
my bashf ulness as to be able to go in company with 
my equals in the neighborhood, and to enjoy the 
society, even, of ladies, which was a wonder to my- 
self as well as to others. About this time, however, 
I can remember one little incident that I can never 
forget, on account of what followed a few years 
later. 

I was going along the road, one day in the week, 
on some errand, not being accoutered in my Sun- 
day best, when I met a very finely dressed young 
lady. We were slightly acquainted, but I had 
never been in her company to speak of. I gave 
her a wide berth, as the saying is, and was so over- 
come with bashfulness, that I could hardly salute 
her in the most commonplace fashion. That lady 



Sketch of the Author. 



115 



was Miss Sue Williams, who some time afterwards 
became my wife. 

Strange things sometimes happen. If an angel 
from heaven had told me on that day that that 
elegant, beautiful, and stylishly dressed woman 
was destined to be my future bride, I could not 
have believed it. That looked like the last and 
most unlikely thing that ever could happen. 

In this same period of my life's history, which I 
am now discussing, began, also, my religious expe- 
riences, which have been developing ever since. 
My parents were very pious and godly people. 
They were both members of the Baptist church at 
old Hepzibah, near our home, and had been from 
their youth. My Uncle Mark Nowell, who lived 
close to us, was a sort of lay preacher, and consid- 
ered by all the neighbors a very model Christian. 
My older brothers and my two sisters, and also my 
many cousins at Uncle Mark's, had joined the 
church previous to this time. I had the most pro- 
found respect for all things religious. Such things 
were so solemn and awful to me that I could not 
bear to think of them scarcely, much less to speak 
of them to any one. 

I was religiously inclined from a child, but no 
one knew the least thing about it but myself, and I 
dared not own it even to myself. As to the real 
fundamentals of religious doctrine, I knew almost 
nothing. My parents, though pious and exemplary 
Christians, were very reluctant and backward to 
teach gospel truth to their children, as others were 
then and are today. So, nearly all the religious in- 
fluence I received from them was that which came 
through their example and not from verbal teach- 
ing. That, however, was pure and unalloyed. 

Family worship was rare in those days, at least, 
in our part of the country. My father read the 
New Testament aloud sometimes, and both he and 



116 



Sketch of the Author. 



my mother sang hymns occasionally. Sunday 
Schools were introduced into our neighborhood 
during my early childhood, and even they did not 
amount to much. About all the preaching we had 
in those early days was hortatory, and not very in- 
structive. I remember I read a little in the Testa- 
ment in those early days, but I dared not let any 
one see me, I was so timid, especially in regard to 
religious matters. So the truth is, people generally 
at that time had but little Bible knowledge, and I 
had less than most others. But when I was about 
nineteen years old, Bev. J. S. Purifoy, of Wake 
Forest, became pastor of Hepzibah church. As he 
was an educated man, of course we began to have 
more instructive preaching. Up to this time I had 
attended church services very little, and had gained 
but little in either knowledge or impressions. But 
now I began to attend regularly, and paid the ut- 
most attention to all that was said and done. 

My interest in the church services deepened 
gradually, till I was really glad when the monthly 
meeting came around. My father noticed this and 
ventured to ask me, one Sunday evening, if the 
service seemed to be long and tedious. I told him 
T never grew tired of the church service. Along in 
the summer of that year, which, I think, was 1856, 
I began to desire above all things to be a Christian. 
I wanted to be prepared to sit with the brethren 
at the Lord's Table. I remember well, on a certain 
Sunday, it was the communion service. I, like the 
rest of the outsiders, went out, when the benedic- 
tion was pronounced, for all to leave the house who 
wished to do so. I went, not because I wanted to, 
but because I feared the people might suspect my 
feelings on the subject of religion. And while out, 
I went round near to the window, where I could be 
near enough to hear and see, at least, some little 
of what was going on, in what I considered the 



Sketch of the Author. 



117 



most beautiful service in all the world. They sang 
a hymn. I don't know what it was; but it had a 
sort of refrain — "Jesus died for rue," which I felt 
as deeply as any of those in the house around the 
table, I reckon. 

Well, says some one, if you felt that way about 
it, why did you not go and unite yourself with the 
church, and thus be one of the members, and so be 
able to partake of the Lord's Supper? Well, I will 
tell you. I thought then, like everybody else, that 
Ave all had to go through a process of getting reli- 
gion, and that there had to be a time and a place 
and a manner, or the thing could not be accom- 
plished. The time was when a revival of religion 
was in process. And so I wanted to see a revival 
above all things, and yet, on account of my timid- 
ity, I dreaded it above all things. And the place 
was at the "mourner's bench" in the house of God. 
And that I dreaded, but longed for still. And the 
manner was to weep and wail and pray, as best 
we might, until we could feel some thrill of inex- 
pressible joy, or else, and better still, be able to see 
some seraphic vision that would make the matter 
so sure, we could never have a doubt as to our ac- 
ceptance with God. Well, in the fall of that same 
year, the revival came, sure enough. It came down 
from heaven. The brethren did not have to "get it 
up." It just came anyhow. It was God's time 
of refreshing. The time was not appointed, as it is 
often done nowadays. The preacher for the occa- 
sion was not invited to come with all the best 
methods available. No ; it was not man-made. It 
was a Pentecostal revival sent down from heaven. 
The Holy Spirit was there in power. Christians 
were happy, and sinners were being cut to the 
heart by the score. 

The meeting lasted about three weeks, day and 
night. The preachers were J. S. Purifoy, L. B. 



118 



Sketch of the Author. 



Horton, Mark Nowell, and Jephtha Layton. All, 
we might say, home preachers. They had a splen- 
did band of singers. Among whom I remember 
very distinctly, William Daniel Scarboro, who was 
the leader, and who died so sadly a few years later, 
in that dreadful "War between the States." He 
was a son of Deacon Daniel Scarboro, and brother 
to J. C. and Chas. W. Scarboro, who are living at 
this time, and greatly beloved by the people. There 
were at times as many as forty or more mourners 
at the front at one time. The deep wailing and 
praying of the penitents could be heard for nearly 
a quarter of a mile. The singing, though as loud 
as possible, could not drown the solemn, sad cry- 
ing of those at the "anxious seats." It was not 
possible to hear the calm preaching of the pastor, 
when the meeting was in full blast. 'But L. B. 
Horton, with stentorian voice, would now and then 
mount on a bench out between the mourners and 
what few sinners were brave enough to stand aloof, 
and exhort them in his plaintive and tremulous 
voice, that, once heard, could never be forgotten. 
He would tell them sometimes that they must be 
glued to their seats. Some of the penitents sat on 
the seats and leaned their heads on the back of the 
seats, some kneeled by their seats, and some lay 
prostrate on the floor. 

Well, here was the time and the place I had 
longed for. And as I was one whose heart was 
opened, at least, I did not stand aloof from the 
good work. I felt like I couldn't bear it all, but 
I could not stay away. I was a true seeker before 
the meeting began. I was too diffident to make a 
move. Some one saw my condition and went to 
me and asked me to go to the front. I was really 
glad to go. I don't know till this day who carried 
me up. Now I was at last a true mourner at the 
mourners' bench; and for about three days and 



Sketch of the Author. 



119 



nights I did all I could do, hoping and praying to 
feel the thrill of inexpressible joy, or to see the 
vision, or to hear the voice, which I had been taught 
in the hortatory preaching, I had so often heard, 
and which had made such a lasting impression on 
my mind, that I concluded it must be so. But 
what I sought so diligently for never came as I 
had hoped. God's ways are not our ways. This, 
however, I did find. The burden was gone at last 
from my heart. I knew not how it went, nor 
when. A calm, sweet peace and a great love filled 
my heart. The singing was inexpressibly sweet. 
I peeped up and saw the faces of the brethren. 
They were almost heavenly in their, to me, new 
beauty. I felt I couldn't sit or kneel there any 
longer. So I got up and did as I felt prompted. 
I was happy, and that was about all I did know. 
I smiled, I laughed, and that was the first time I 
had even smiled since the meeting commenced. 

Soon they closed for the day and we all started, 
as usual, for our homes. Before, I had kept along 
with the crowd or lagged behind; but this time I 
felt so happy and so light that I blushed to find 
myself about twenty yards ahead of all the rest. 
I wanted to see mrv mother. Well, I had made an 
open profession of religion, I had openly confessed 
Christ before men, and that was all, I suppose, 
there was to do. My religious life had begun in 
earnest. At the next regular monthly meeting, 
which was not long after the close of the revival, 
I and one hundred and nine others were baptized 
in old Buffalo Creek, near the church where I, in 
later years, baptized hundreds of other people. 
That w T as to me a great meeting. These were great 
events. This was an epoch in my life. This stands 
out as one of the never-to-be-forgotten times and 
places in my life's eventful journey. 



120 



Sketch of the Author. 



That fall and winter passed very happily. We 
had prayer meetings in the neighborhood and ex- 
perienced good times in them and at church also. 
One event during that winter I can never forget, 
and that was the big snow which fell, I think, in 
January, 1857. It began falling on Saturday even- 
ing, and fell continuously till late Sunday night. 
The wind blew hard all the time and drifted the 
snow so that in places it was from three to five feet 
deep. It was at least two feet deep on a level. 
During that winter the partridges and some other 
birds nearly all died ; and it was the same with the 
rabbits. A little of the snow and ice could be seen 
as late as March in the low and shady places. 

That spring I passed through an experience I 
never can forget, though it is the same expe- 
rience that every Christian has to pass through 
sooner or later, I reckon, and with varied intensity. 
The experience I speak of is the reaction that takes 
place when a young convert first begins to realize 
that the old sinful flesh and the old sinful world 
are still in existence, and that, contrary to his ex- 
pectation, he can be tempted with evil. This was 
a sore perplexity to me. I was ignorant, ard, in 
my ignorance, I had believed that to be a Chris- 
tian was to be always happy and free from the 
touch and the approach of evil. Old Brother Hor- 
ton had frequently exhorted the young converts 
that the warfare would surely come on after a 
while. But my attitude in regard to that was simi- 
lar to that of the disciples when the Lord Jesus 
told them that He was to be put to death and would 
rise again the third day. I simply didn't believe 
it as a real fact. But I found, to my dismay, that 
the warfare was on, or, at least, there was soma 
trouble, which I could not exactly make out. And, 
as people generally do in distress, I put the worst 
construction possible on my situation, and con- 



Sketch of the Author. 



121 



eluded that I had made a lamentable mistake in 
joining the church, when I was not converted. But 
how to reconcile that with my inmost feelings, I 
could not possibly divine. I loved the church, and 
the brethren, and I believed I loved the Lord, 
though not half so much as I ought ; and I was sure 
I was not my old self in all respects, and what to 
do under the circumstances I did not know. I 
was too timid to speak of my troubles and per- 
plexities to any one in the whole world. And so I 
had to blunder along as best I might in my ig- 
norance. I tried to pray; but the main trouble 
was, how to reconcile my feelings at that time 
with what I still vainly thought to be the only 
true feelings of a truly converted person. That 
was to me an insuperable difficulty. In that sad 
dilemma I had access to "Baxter's Saints' Best," a 
good book which I thought might help me; but it 
only involved me in still deeper trouble. For in 
that book the author gave a most vivid description 
of a sinner under conviction, and also the exceed- 
ing joy of one just having passed from death unto 
life. I felt almost sure that I had never been con- 
victed, and, of course, never converted. I was 
almost beside myself. This lasted for several 
weeks. No one, however, had the least idea of the 
struggle that was going on in my own mind. 

At last light began to break on my beclouded 
vision. It occurred to me that there might be de- 
grees in the intensity of conviction, and, also, in 
the joy of conversion. And that old Brother Hor- 
ton's "warfare" was something real, and must be 
accepted as such. So I concluded that hardened 
sinners, like the eruciners of our Lord on the day 
of Pentecost, might feel as Mr. Baxter had de- 
picted it ; but a poor little boy like myself, who had 
never heard even of much of the vice of the world, 
and who always had a tender conscience, might be 



122 



Sketch of the Author. 



converted like Lydia was at the riverside, when the 
Lord opened her heart and she attended to the 
things spoken by Paul. Thus my difficulties on 
these points subsided; though I was a little sorry 
to give up my long-cherished ideas of a happy and 
peaceful Christian life and to accept that of a 
belligerent type. 

Along about this time in my life's history I had 
my first young dream of love. There lived an old 
man near Eagle Rock who had noticed me as a 
steady and moral youth and had said some very 
flattering things of me. This good old gentleman 
had one single daughter, his youngest, and she was 
very nice and very good-looking, gome of my 
friends suggested that it would be well for me to 
pay my respects to her. And so I did. We liked 
each other and would have married, but for one 
thing. At this time I was under a strong convic- 
tion that God had called me to be a preacher of the 
gospel. ( But more of this later. ) And so I wished 
her to engage herself to me till I could finish my 
education. This she refused, saying her dead 
mother had told her never to make a long engage- 
ment. Had we married then, the whole course of 
my life would have been changed. I should have 
been a poor, uneducated preacher, and a very poor 
farmer without muscular force to do the work. 
Man proposes, but God disposes. That lady is still 
living, so her name is withheld. 

As was hinted above, I had now strong impres- 
sions to enter the ministry. This soon became 
known among my friends, and finally got to the 
ears of our pastor. He encouraged me and had me 
to lead in public prayer, and to hold prayer meet- 
ings in the neighborhood. I tried hard to do as he 
wished me to, but now I had a cross sure enough. 
For how one so timid and so diffident could ever so 
far overcome these things as to stand before con- 



Sketch of the Author. 



123 



gregations and preach the gospel was a question 
that seemed hard to answer. I spent a whole year, 
I suppose, studying and praying over that one 
thing. At last I gained courage enough to face 
my neighbors in prayer meeting, and so concluded 
to ask the church for license to "exercise my gifts," 
as the matter was expressed in those days. This 
was very readily done, and so my life-work was 
determined upon. Elder Purifoy now advised me 
to go to school, and prepare to do my work more 
efficiently. This I was willing to do, but had not 
the means to do so. However, through his influ- 
ence, I was received as a beneficiary of the Board 
of Education of the Baptist State Convention, and 
thus the way was opened for me. This was about 
the beginning of the year 1858. In the summer of 
that year I was sent to Clayton, N. C, where I w r as 
placed under the care of Rev. W. B. Jones, who 
taught a preparatory school at that place. Under 
his wise management and tuition, and that of his 
excellent wife, Mrs. Delia Wight Jones, who was 
his superior in intellectual attainments, I made 
rapid progress. During the next session, in the be- 
ginning of 1859 (sessions then lasted only five 
months), the school was under the care of Prof. 
T. J. Woodson, who had succeeded Mr. Jones. 
Under this teacher I studied so hard and learned 
so rapidly that I overtook a class of young men 
who had a full year's advantage over me. And so 
in the summer of that same year I entered Wake 
Forest College with them. 

Here, however, I will pause and give a few inci- 
dents of my school life at Clayton. The first thing 
I had to learn there was, that I was exceedingly 
green and knew almost nothing, especially of the 
world of men and things. This, however, was a 
hard and painful lesson to learn, and cost me many 
a blush of shame, and many a laugh on the part 



124 



Sketch of the Author. 



of my companions. My main difficulty was, I 
thought I knew lots. 

When I first became a preacher I thought, of 
course, the proper thing to do was to get me a 
preacher's hat, a regular bee-gum silk, or beaver 
hat. This was very natural, because Elder Purifoy 
and old Uncle Mark both had such hats. This dis- 
played my ignorance, as well as my vanity, which 
was not at all becoming, and was at the same time 
the innocent cause of many a smile and much ridi- 
cule on the part of more mature and more sensible 
people. 

While under Mr. Jones, during the first session, 
I was asked by him to go to Pine Level and fill an 
appointment for him on a certain Sunday. I very 
readily consented to do so. Therefore at the ap- 
pointed time I donned my best clothes and placed 
the silk hat, having been well smoothed, on my 
head and sallied forth, in company with Mr. Jones, 
to the depot, to take the train. Now I had never 
been on a railroad train or car of any kind in my 
life. And strange to say, I had never noticed any- 
thing much about such things during my brief stay 
at Clayton. So when we got to the depot and the 
train had pulled in, Mr. Jones had some business 
with the mail agent and went to the baggage, or 
mail car, to attend to it, while I followed at his 
heels. I don't reckon I had ever heard of a ticket 
at that time, but thought, of course, the thing to 
do was to climb unceremoniously into a railroad 
train, as one would into a cart or wagon, at the first 
convenient place one should happen to strike. So 
as there was a big door in the side of this particular 
car, I made a mighty lunge and sprang into it, silk 
hat and all, steps or no steps. The mail agent 
looked about as blank as if an alligator had flopped 
into his car. As I saw no special place to sit down 
and be comfortable, I walked very leisurely into 



Sketch of the Author. 



125 



the next car, in Avkich I found plenty of seats, some 
of which were occupied by colored people, who 
seemed to think me a slave trader, or something 
of the kind. I took my seat, however, with as 
much dignity as I well could, thinking rather sin- 
gular that no white people were traveling on that 
occasion. Pretty soon Mr. Jones came to the win- 
dow of the car and beckoned me to go back to the 
next car. I did so, and at last found the right 
place for a white man to sit down. After the train 
had moved on, I had a painful feeling to come over 
me, which seemed to say: "You have played the 
fool with your silk hat on." 

On another occasion during that same session I 
had a narrow escape from a terrible danger. My 
room was in the basement of what was then known 
as Mr. Jones's brick house, having one door lead- 
ing into the back yard. Out in the garden was a 
hill of sweet potatoes, to which we had access when 
we needed any to roast at night in our rooms. He 
also had two real bull-dogs which stayed in the 
back yard. One night I concluded to go and get 
some potatoes, thinking that the dogs knew me 
and would not bother, or perhaps that I could give 
them the slip. So I got the potatoes and was re- 
turning to my room, when, just before reaching 
the door, I saw to my horror, that one of the dogs 
was close behind me and hastening to me as silent 
as the night itself. I made a rush to the door and 
slammed it behind me just in time to save myself. 
I have always counted that a providential escape. 
That was my last trip to the potato hill. 

During the second session, I and several boys 
boarded at Col. W. H. Meddlers', a little less than 
two miles up the railroad from Clayton. He had 
but one child then old enough to attend school, and 
that was a little girl named Ella. The other boys 
walked so fast that she could hardly keep up ; and. 



126 



Sketch of the Author. 



besides, they seemed to have neither care nor 
thought for her. I noticed all this, and concluded 
to take care of her, even if we had to forego the 
company of the other boys. And so it became our 
custom to go and come together. She was some- 
times wayward, though generally lovely. I took 
pleasure in caring for her, though at times it cost 
me self-denial. I remember once we were out 
under the shade of a tree at the noon recess, and 
she fell asleep. I placed her head on my lap and 
sat thus until the bell rang. She was a little sister 
to me, and I loved her dearly. After leaving that 
school and going to Wake Forest, I never saw her 
but once, and that was on the platform of the Clay- 
ton depot, one day as I was passing on the train. 
She saw me and waved her hands in great delight. 
The next time I heard from her she was dead — 
died of diphtheria. Her memory is dear to me 
yet. And the question often comes to me in re- 
gard to her as to many, many others : Shall we 
meet again in the beautiful realms of light to part 
no more forever? Those were sweet and happy 
days, and I love to think of them, and to see again 
in fancy the faces of loved ones smiling from behind 
their shadows. 

In the summer of 1859 I entered Wake Forest 
College. This was an event in my life. I entered, 
however, under difficulties, as I had had but one 
year's preparation in Latin, Greek, and Algebra. 
The professor in Latin told me I would have to 
make up some part of Virgil, as I had not read any 
of that, I agreed to do so ; and for once in my life 
I used a "pony," as the boys called a translation. 
One of them let me have a translation of Virgil, 
and with that I could soon get up a hundred lines. 
I read a few lessons in that book, and, as. I read it 
so glibly and translated so well, the professor told 
me not to bother any mbre with that. And by hard 



Sketch of the Author. 127 

study I kept up with the class, and always took 
first grade marks in all studies. 

My college days were delightful all through with 
one exception; and that exception will stand out 
for all coming time in history as the "great Civil 
War between the States." The rumblings of that 
awful storm had been heard as Prof. Wm. Royall 
said, ever since 1820. And at last, after long de- 
lay, it fell on our beloved country in the midst of 
my school days. Almost everything was disorgan- 
ized; people went wild with the war fever, and one 
woman said she wanted to be three men and take 
an active part in the struggle. Of course the ex- 
citement of the times hindered us in our studies. 
Many of the young men left and volunteered to 
enter the army. Finally, in 1862, the college had 
to suspend on account of the first conscription law, 
which took all young men from eighteen to thirty- 
five years of age. That took me. So I went to 
Camp Holmes, near Raleigh, in obedience to the 
call. Here I will state that I did not wish to enter 
the army. I wanted to live and be a preacher. 
And as my health was frail, I did not believe I 
could live but a few months under the hardships of 
camp life ; and I fondly hoped the doctor in charge 
would give me an honorable discharge on that ac- 
count, or on account of my partial deafness. 

And now I will relate what has ever since 
seemed to me a clear case of special providence. 
Soon after we got into camp, one of the doctors got 
us in line and asked all who could write well to 
step out. A great number did so. I did not at 
first. But a friend of mine by my side asked me 
to step out also, and after being urged by him to do 
so I stepped out with the others. The doctor soon 
came along taking the handwriting of each one, 
and when he came to me I wrote my name and re- 
marked to him that I was a little deaf. He looked 



128 



Sketch of the Author. 



at me a moment and said he would take me to be 
his secretary, and to be in his office next morning. 
Now why did he take me? I was excited and 
timid, and never could write a pretty hand. Surely 
some higher power moved that doctor to decide as 
he did. Well, I wrote for him a few days, and one 
morning, on entering his office, he very kindly told 
me that they had dispensed with my part of the 
work, and would not need me any more. I was 
dumbfounded and silent. I expected nothing then 
but to go on to Richmond, as I had seen others sent 
on who were as frail as myself and some as deaf. 
But the young doctor for whom I worked said to 
the older one, "We had as well give this man a dis- 
charge, as he is deaf somewhat." The old one said, 
"Yes." I took the paper and haven't seen that 
camp since. 

In 1863 I was married to Miss Sue Williams, 
that fine lady I mentioned on a former page, and 
to whom I was afraid almost to speak. This ap- 
peared then to be a rash act under the circum- 
stances, but I thought I was following the leadings 
of providence. We lived together about thirty-five 
years, and, though we were sometimes in straitened 
circumstances, the Lord always opened the way 
for us in due time. 

Soon after our marriage I was ordained to the 
full work of the gospel ministry at old Hepzibah 
Church, my mother church. In the autumn of 
that same year, 1863, we went to Clayton to live, 
and where I taught a small school for the balance 
of the war period. While living there I went up 
into Virginia and spent two months as army mis- 
sionary while the soldiers were in winter quarters. 
I found the regiment which I was appointed to 
serve at Taylorsville, between Richmond and Han- 
over Junction. This was a small railroad station, 
near which the soldiers were spending the winter 



Sketch of the Author. 



129 



in log huts. There were no chaplains or minis- 
ters of any kind in the regiment at that time ex- 
cept one Lutheran. I soon found the men had no 
confidence at all in him. There was a good brick 
church building in the village, and we got permis- 
sion to use that for night services, the soldiers fur- 
nishing candles for light. In that building I 
preached almost every night while I remained with 
them. The meetings were well attended, and we 
had a regular revival all the time. There I did my 
first baptizing in a river near by. After the spring 
began to open, I saw that the army would soon 
have to start out in the campaign, and so I con- 
cluded to return home. A large number of the men 
followed me to the depot and wept like children 
when we had to part. 

We remained in Clavton till Sherman's armv 
passed through and the war ended. It would be 
too long a story to try to tell a tenth part of what 
we saw and suffered and the hardships we expe- 
rienced during those dark days of 1865. Suffice it 
to say that we passed through it all, without per- 
sonal injury or violence. Indeed it seemed that we 
were under the special care and protection of the 
Heavenly Father. We were exceedingly glad when 
the last soldier of that dreadful army had passed, 
and we were safe and well. 

From that time down to the present I wish to 
speak of my work and the times in which we lived 
in sections. The first section is, of course, the 
reconstruction period. At the beginning of this 
dark and unsettled period, we lived at a small vil- 
lage in Johnston County known as Earpsboro. I 
was soon called to preach at the Lee's Chapel 
Church in Nash County. This was my first regu- 
lar pastorate, and it continued quite a long time. 
In the summer of 1866 a great revival broke out in 
that church which will long be remembered. It 
9 



130 



Sketch of the author. 



was a revival sure enough. The church was ripe 
for it, and the people were feeling its influence 
weeks before it began. As evidence of this fact, I 
will give the experience of a man and his wife, as 
they told it to me after the meeting closed. He 
was one of the main fiddlers of the community and 
his w r ife was a star dancer. They had frequent 
dances in the neighborhood, and when they were at 
home alone, on other nights, he would make the 
music and she would dance. One night, not many 
days before the revival commenced, he said he was 
feeling rather serious, and on mentioning it to his 
wife, he found her in the same state of mind. 
The preaching day was approaching, and their 
minds had been stirred by the former preaching, so 
that the near approach of another meeting caused 
them to think along that line. But he concluded 
to have a dance again instead of praying, as he 
felt he ought. But on bringing out his old fiddle 
he found one of the strings snapped. That made 
them both more upset in their minds than before; 
but he mended it and played awhile, though with- 
out pleasure. The next evening on getting his in- 
strument of music, in a sort of daring manner, he 
found another string broken. He said that was 
too much for them both, and so they had no dancing 
that night. And they both concluded then that 
they would give up that sort of pleasure and try to 
do better. In this state of mind they came to the 
meeting. And during the first sermon I could 
hear a woman crying in her distress in the rear end 
of the house. At the close an invitation was given 
for any who wished the prayers of God's people to 
come forward, and the first one to come was that 
fiddler's dancing wife. She was soon happily con- 
verted, and during the meeting her husband also, 
with a multitude of others. 



Sketch of the Author. 



131 



During this same meeting there was another 
man in the community who was considered the 
hardest case of all. He would not attend. His 
neighbors would pass by every day on their way to 
church and ask him to go with them. His excuse 
was that he did not have time. One morning sev- 
eral of them agreed to make him an offer to pay 
back every day he lost by attending the meeting. 
On hearing the proposal he saw no way to get 
round it, and concluded to go. In a few days he 
was numbered with the converts. He then told his 
friends he would not take the work they had of- 
fered, saying that he was already paid. 

I can never forget old Lee's Chapel. There I 
baptized hundreds of people; and there I enjoyed 
some of the sweetest experiences of my life. I re- 
member them now with pleasure and pray for them 
daily, though many of them whom I served and 
baptized are gone to their rewards. 

During this same period I also served the 
churches of Hepzibah and Poplar Spring. The 
first of these, my home church, I served many 
years, and held many good meetings, and baptized 
many people. Those were happy days; and I look 
back upon them now with the sweetest joy of my 
life. At Poplar Spring we likewise had many good 
meetings. At one of them I baptized seventy-five 
persons, among them some of the most prominent 
people in Franklin County. 

But now let us consider the times. They were 
hard. The people were slowly recovering from the 
calamities and losses of the war. Almost every- 
thing had to be readjusted to the new times and 
conditions. Farming had to be done generally on 
other and better principles than formerly. This 
turned out to be a blessing. New laws brought 
about new modes of carrying on mercantile busi- 
ness. Government, politics, and political parties 



132 



Sketch of the Author. 



all had to be reconstructed; even schools and 
churches were not totally free from these trans- 
mutations; and it was at least ten years or more 
after the close of the war before matters and things 
got settled down to smooth running again. One 
of the saddest features of this period was the state 
of political animosity that ran high and stirred up 
bad feelings among neighbors, and sometimes rela- 
tives. This was especially bad in the churches, 
A preacher who dared to hold radical political 
views could not get a hearing, and was virtually 
proscribed by the mass of the white people. This 
condition of political hatred was due mostly to that 
egregious blunder the Congress of the United 
States made in giving the suffrage to the ignorant 
negroes, who were totally unfit for the privilege, 
and would of course always vote against everything 
that was best for the white people of the South. 
I am thankful that those things are now matters 
of history. 

Another one of the dreadful fruits of these evil 
times was bands of robbers who infested certain 
localities and carried on their bold depredations in 
a high-handed manner. These were mostly white 
men of a low type, who feared neither God nor 
man. One band of them operated for some time 
in Nash and Franklin counties. The country was 
then in a state of semi-lawlessness, and so some of 
the leading citizens rose up and captured the 
leader and some others of this band without war- 
rant or process of law, and the Governor of the 
State sanctioned the proceedings and had them 
condemned to prison for ten years. The leader 
served his term and returned home a converted and 
a better man. I knew him well afterwards as a 
member of one of my churches, and he was well 
thought of. 



Sketch of the Author. 133 



We now come to the most terrible outgrowth of 
these unsettled times, and that was the Ku Klux 
Klan. The general government seemed to make 
more of the negroes than of the white people of the 
South. That made the former impudent and en- 
couraged them in that impudence; and, of course, 
it enraged the high-minded white people almost be- 
yond endurance. And to make matters worse, a 
great many adventurers from the North came down 
South to grow rich, or at least to better their finan- 
cial conditions. These sided with the colored peo- 
ple and such white men as agreed with them in the 
politics of the day, and thus encouraged the ex- 
slaves in their insolence. Many and awful crimes 
were committed by the negroes on the helpless 
white people. I say helpless because the white men 
being in a large measure disfranchised, the ne- 
groes and their party friends were in most of the 
offices, and so justice could not well be meted out 
against a negro rapist, nor one guilty of any other 
crime. So in such a state of things there rose up, 
as it were out of the darkness, a terrible society of 
prominent white men, who came and went as 
ghosts, and often fell upon the unsuspecting crimi- 
nal, and he was no more. Or if his crime was not 
so heinous as to merit such summary proceedings, 
he was whipped so severely that he was afraid to 
repeat even the slightest crime. And thus, by these 
awful proceedings, which fell thick and fast on the 
impudent and vicious perpetrators of crime in 
every locality, a fear of dire punishment put a 
check on evildoers and gave the better minded 
people time to think and plan for better things. 

This dreadful secret order may be perhaps con- 
demned severely by all historians, but it was sim- 
ply the natural outgrowth of the times. It was to 
protect the innocent, and especially the innocent 
women, from violence, which could not well be pre- 



134 



Sketch of the Author. 



vented or punished under existing conditions. The 
object of the order was similar to the Knights of 
the Middle Ages, one of whose duties was "to right 
poor ladies' harms" (Shak.). And again its ob- 
ject was the same as the Holy Vehme, which was a 
dreaded secret society that existed in the eastern 
part of Germany for many years. (See Scott's 
Anne of Gierstein). All these secret political so- 
cieties rose because there was a pressing need for 
them, did their work, sometimes abusing it, and, 
when their work was done, passed away. 

The next period may be termed the period of re- 
constructing the reconstructed. It was a time of 
undoing some things and adding others which were 
needed for the new or changed conditions. This 
period lasted till the elimination of the colored 
vote. During these years I lived in Johnston and 
Nash counties, and served a number of churches 
in these and some other counties. And as my fam- 
ily was somewhat large, and the salaries offered by 
the churches were small and irregularly paid, I 
was compelled to do other work nearly all the time 
to help out. This work was teaching, farming, 
and selling books. That made it very hard on my 
strength, which never was at all robust. I now 
look back upon those years of my life and wonder 
how I ever did hold up under it all. In 1880 we 
moved back to Clayton again. There I was en- 
gaged in school work for about five years. The 
most of the time I was assistant teacher with Rev. 
J. M. White. Those were pleasant years. I en- 
joyed the work so much. But in the midst of it 
all we had our first great sorrow there, when our 
oldest boy died of typhoid fever. I remember dis- 
tinctly many of the pupils in school there at that 
time. Among others Mr. White's two sons, John 
E., and Bruce. Bruce was as good as he could be, 
but John E. was as bad as boys ever get to be. It 



Sketch of the Author. 135 



is an old saying that when a bad boy becomes truly 
converted he makes an exceedingly good and use- 
ful man. This has been verified in this case. For 
that once bad boy in Clayton is now Dr. John E. 
White, of Atlanta, Ga. The Lord can do wonders. 
When He wanted a man who could by grace become 
the chiefest of the apostles, he chose Saul of Tar- 
sus, the chief of sinners. When a boy is rude and 
full of mischief it shows that he is fully charged 
with life and energy. In other words, it is a sign 
that he is possessed of vast powers and resources, 
and when these are directed into right channels, it 
is not to be wondered at that he should make his 
mark in the world. 

I will mention one other boy in that school, Her- 
man Home. He was the brightest boy I ever 
taught or knew. He moved along through books 
like a man plowing in soft, sandy soil free of roots 
and stumps. He seldom hitched. The last I heard 
of him he was high up in the intellectual world; 
but I have now lost sight of his whereabouts. 

While there we had some of the best revivals of 
religion I have ever passed through. Their mem- 
ory lingers with me now as a sweet incense from 
the dear old past. One thing, I reckon, which 
makes me remember them so distinctly is that they 
were about the last of old fashioned revivals I have 
ever seen or enjoyed. For about that time a very 
perceptible change began to come over everything 
religious, or at least everything pertaining to the 
methods of conducting revival meetings. I pre- 
sume this was caused in a large measure by the 
appearance, about that time, of what w T ere called 
evangelists. These men would hold great meet- 
ings in towns and cities, and use new and strange 
methods to get people to make an open profession 
of religion, so that they might count converts by 
the hundreds, and thus gain popularity. I do not 



136 



Sketch of the Author. 



say that this was the prime motive of every one of 
them, but it certainly got to be so after awhile. So 
a great many pastors of churches in all denomina- 
tions, wanting likewise to be considered popular 
revivalists, began to imitate the claptrap methods 
of these peripatetic evangelists, and so the good old 
way of holding revival meetings, in which repent- 
ance was preached and people were convicted and 
mourned and repented, and were converted by the 
Holy Spirit, gradually gave way to the present 
methods of shallow preaching, shallow conviction, 
shallow repentance, and shallow conversion, which 
have filled all our churches with shallow Chris- 
tians and almost obliterated the lines between the 
world and the church. 

I think we need reconstructing along this line 
very much indeed. The doors of admission into 
our churches are open too wide; to get in is too 
easy. The conditions of membership are too light ; 
and then to get out is too hard. Turning people 
out of the church has almost gone out of fashion. 
Too many pastors and churches are like the Metho- 
dist preacher who once told those who came for- 
ward to join his church, that he was taking them 
into the church, but if they ever got out, that would 
be God's business, and he had nothing to do with it. 

In 1885 we w^ent to Smithfield to live, where we 
remained some eight years. While there I served 
the church in town part of the time, and several 
others in the country round about. I also taught 
school some, and worked some three years for the 
American Tract Society. While there, when I did 
not have full work, Bro. J. M. Beaty gave me mis- 
sionary work, at his own expense, in destitute parts 
of the county. At some of those points churches 
are now established. He has, I reckon, done more 
for the Baptist cause in Johnston County than any 
other living man. When I first knew him he was 



Sketch of the Author. 137 



a member of the Free Will Baptist Church; and 
he told me when he became a member of the Mis- 
sionary Baptist Church that the main thing that 
led him to the change was that his former denomi- 
nation was not doing much in the way of missions 
and education; and as he wanted to do something, 
he united with those who were working and with 
whom he could work also. 

While living in Smithfield the Charleston earth- 
quake happened. On the night of its occurrence, 
Dr. Solomon Pool and myself were engaged in a 
revival meeting in a schoolhouse out in the coun- 
try a few miles. I had preached that night, and 
as I was tired, I was sitting down on a chair at the 
time the two distinct shocks came. The congre- 
gation were generally standing at the time singing 
the closing song. I felt the first shock very sen- 
sibly, but never thought it to be anything serious 
at all. The second shock I thought to be a hog 
under the house. When we got out in the yard 
some spoke of the shaking, and we found that some 
felt it and some did not. But one man said he 
was out in the yard sitting by a tree, and that the 
earth itself was shaking. Then we all recognized 
what it was. On getting back to town I was sur- 
prised to see every house well lighted and appa- 
rently all the people up, though it was quite late. 
I asked the first man I saw if anything had hap- 
pened. He told me that there had been an earth- 
quake or something very serious, and that the 
people were very much excited. The next night we 
found a larger crowd than usual at the school- 
house, and it was not difficult at all to move the 
people to act along religious lines. We had a good 
meeting after that, if it did take an earthquake to 
start it. Some said that they didn't think earth- 
quake religion would do ; but I told them the jailer 



138 



Sketch of the Author. 



and his family seemed to be truly converted, and 
they had earthquake religion. 

Some weeks after these occurrences a lady liv- 
ing near town sent for me to go to see her. I went 
and found her deeply distressed in regard to her 
spiritual condition. After talking to and praying 
with her a good while, I told her on leaving that I 
would see her again on a certain Sunday evening, 
as I should be in her neighborhood at that time. 
At my arrival at her home on the day appointed I 
found her smiling and happy. And among other 
things, she told me that she certainly must be con- 
verted, because she was really glad to see a 
preacher come to dine with her and to talk with 
her on the subject of personal religion, for she said 
that if such a thing had happened a few weeks 
before she would have been almost overcome with 
fear and dread. She was another earthquake con- 
vert. 

In the beginning of 1893 we moved to Nashville, 
N. C. While there I served the church in Nash- 
ville and many others. Also to help out meager 
salaries I ran a little farm. We remained in Nash- 
ville about ten years or a little more ; and that time 
marks the darkest period of my eventful life. My 
oldest living son began, while we lived in Smith- 
field, to form bad habits, which bore their full crop 
of evil fruit while in Nashville. His first bad 
habit was cigarette smoking. Nothing, it seemed, 
could be done to check this pernicious practice ; and 
it grew from bad to worse, till he was a perfect 
slave of the curse of smoking. That, or something, 
led to drinking. This awful habit bound him with 
another chain of slavery. Next he took to mor- 
phine, which, if possible, was tenfold worse than 
the others. These things heaped untold trouble 
upon the hearts of his parents and younger brother 
and sisters. Evil habits lead to evil deeds, and to 



Sketch of the Author. 139 



follow evil company. But I forbear to tell all we 
had to endure on his account; what depths of 
heartrending misery and trouble we passed through 
none can ever realize except they pass through the 
same as we did. At last his poor mother, my once 
beautiful and happy bride, and who was my ever 
faithful helpmeet while she lived, sank under her 
load of trouble, as she was feeble any way, and 
died in 1898. The darkness and gloom of my life 
. thus became doubled, as I must bear it alone. And 
in one short week after her burial news reached 
me, one rainy morning, that my youngest son, my 
pet, my darling, and the hope of my declining 
years, was dead and in his coffin at South Eocky 
Mount, where he worked at night for the railroad 
company. And the message said, "Come and take 
him home." At first I was dazed, overwhelmed, 
and almost senseless. But soon the truth, the sad, 
the awful, the heartrending truth bore down upon 
me like a mountain with all its crushing weight. 
For once I was glad his mother was gone to her 
grave ; for to have seen her grief at that hour would 
have been unbearable. I went, in company with 
my ever faithful friend, Major Conyers. The first 
man I met was the gentleman under whom he had 
worked. He told me that my boy was the best per- 
son he had ever had in his employ in all his life. 
But here the curtain must fall. It won't do to try 
to tell what I felt when I knelt at his coffin and 
looked upon the face of my baby boy cold in death ; 
nor what was the heartrending scene when we 
reached home and heard the wail of his dear sis- 
ters, in this another bitter grief, so soon after their 
dear mother had gone to her grave; nor that last 
scene at the cemetery, where it seemed that in that 
grave was buried all the light and peace of life to 
me. He was hurt in a wreck on the railroad yards 
in the night while on duty, and died in two hours. 



140 



Sketch of the Author. 



I thought of Jacob when Joseph's bloody coat was 
laid at his feet. Surely his grief could not have 
been much sorer than mine in that calamity. He 
and his mother sleep now side by side in the ceme- 
tery at Nashville, and it can't be so very long 
before I shall go to them. 

After all these sad occurrences my general health 
became very bad and my nervous system almost 
failed; but I continued to serve churches as best I 
could. Finally my only living son, the prodigal, 
left the State and broke off all intercourse with 
me, and I gave him up into the hands of the Lord, 
and so that trouble gradually passed off in a large 
measure. I don't really know now whether he is 
dead or alive. It don't seem possible that a loving 
parent could ever become reconciled to a thing like 
that, but I have found it to be possible. 

Along about the end of this period of my life and 
the times in which we live, in the year 1902, I be- 
came acquainted with a remarkably good Christian 
lady who was engaged in teaching a school near 
one of my churches. She was a Virginian and a 
life-long teacher, as well as an intelligent, refined, 
and eminently pious woman. I think it was the 
good providence of God that brought us together at 
that time. In her genial society, and, after she 
went back to Virginia, by means of delightful cor- 
respondence with her, the light of life came back to 
me and the burden of distress was lifted from my 
broken spirit. In 1904 we were married, and ever 
since she has been to me a solace and almost a 
ministering angel. I shall never cease to thank 
God for my "Mary Lacy." 

We now come to the present period, which I will 
denominate the period of expansion. This is a 
wonderful period in the history of the world, and 
especially in the history of our own American Re- 
public, which stands out now as the guiding star 



Sketch of the Author. 141 



of all the peoples of earth, the ideal to which all 
mankind are tending. What wonderful expansion 
along all lines the last decade has developed ! Ag- 
riculture, the basis of all material wealth, is rap- 
idly being revolutionized, and, in a few more 
decades, will make our nation the granary of the 
world. Manufacturing along all lines is expand- 
ing and developing in a way that astonishes our 
own people, as well as all the balance of the world. 
Education of every kind and degree is filling the 
land with schools high and low and offering advan- 
tages to all classes of society in a way that our 
fathers never dreamed of. Wealth also is expand- 
ing so rapidly and with such strides that the finan- 
cial world stands aghast at present results and 
wonders what the final outcome of such things will 
be. All transportation agencies are overworked in 
trying to move the products of farms, forests, fac- 
tories, and mines. Church and Sunday School 
work also, especially that department known as 
missions, are expanding and reaching out to the 
ends of the earth. Never before has the world 
seen such activity along these lines. Men, women, 
and children are all engaged in this work for the 
spread of the true religion of Jesus Christ and for 
the betterment and uplifting of the people and 
nations of the world. The inventive genius of man 
is also expanding and adding new machines for 
farm, factory, and shop; and, also new facilities 
for travel on land and on the sea, and even through 
the air. Moreover, this inventive genius has 
brought forth some of its most wonderful produc- 
tions to facilitate rapid printing and bookmaking, 
and thus disseminating knowledge throughout the 
world. And the still more wonderful things, 
known as telegraphy, with and without wires, and 
the telephone, by which people may talk across 
States if not continents. 



142 



Sketch of the Author. 



And what astonishes us more than all this is 
that all these expansions and truly wonderful 
things we have been speaking of are now in their 
infancy or childhood. People who lived one hun- 
dred years ago had as little idea of many things 
with which we are now familiar as we now have of 
many more which will be common one hundred 
years hence. There is no limit to improvement, to 
expansion or invention. The young people of to- 
day have a brighter future before them than any 
generation that has ever lived on the face of the 
earth. Let them fall into line with all that is good 
and grand and prepare themselves to fill their 
places with honor in the great battle of life that is 
to open up before them. 

But as I am now seventy-three years of age, 
these glorious things of the coming years are not 
for me. I have served my generation as well as I 
could under the varied circumstances and condi- 
tions of my life and time. I am no longer in the 
active ministry. My work is almost done; and as 
I drop out my prayer is that many more will be 
raised up to fill the vacancy, so that the work may 
go on with increased power and success. As I can 
now only sit on the declining side of the mountain 
of life and look towards the setting sun thereof, I 
wish to flash back to the younger hosts who are 
marching up the other side these words : "Your 
country, the world, and your King expect every 
man to do his duty." 



SIX CHOICE SERMONS 



SERMON I. 



The Substitute. 

Text: "For He hath made him to be sin for us, 
who knew no sin, that ive might be made the 
righteousness of God in him.'' — Cor. 5:21. 

The doctrine of substitution runs through all 
the Old Testament Scriptures from the entrance of 
sin into the world, which gave rise to man's need of 
a sin-bearer. It crops out in all the bloody sacri- 
fices and offerings that were instituted by divine 
authority, and which figure so prominently in all 
ceremonial worship. In a few places it looms up 
like mountain peaks with marked prominence. As 
when the ram took the place of Isaac on Mount 
Moriah, and when the high priest, once a year, en- 
tered the Most Holy place and sprinkled the blood 
of the sin offering seven times before the mercy 
seat, and when the scapegoat, on whose head the 
sins of the people were symbolically placed, was 
sent aw r ay forever into the wilderness. But all 
these things were but types of the Lamb of God, 
who, in the fullness of time, appeared as man's true 
substitute, and took his place, and bore his sins 
away, and then carried His own blood and 
sprinkled it before the true mercy-seat in heaven. 

It was left to the Apostle Paul, however, to fully 
elucidate and expound this deep and fundamental 
doctrine of grace, which rests on the Eternal Rock. 

A substitute is a person who takes the place of 
another to do something, or to suffer in his stead. 
As a man who goes into the army in the place of 
his friend, or one who signs a bond is a substitute. 

I. The qualifications of a substitute. 

1. He must be free from the obligations involved. 
(a) A little boy violates the rules of the school and 

* 10 



146 



Six Choice Sermons. 



is brought up for punishment. His older brother 
loves him so tenderly that he offers to take his 
place and suffer in his stead ; but, on investigation, 
it is found that this older brother is guilty of the 
same offense. Had he been innocent it might have 
been permitted. But one sinner can not substitute 
for another, (b) Again a man proposes to take 
his neighbor's place and go into the army for him. 
But he is found to be under the same obligations 
to the government as his friend. Had he been free 
from military duty himself it might have been all 
right, but he is not free from the obligation in- 
volved. 

As to our substitute, Jesus the Christ, we find 
Him entirely free from all obligations on this 
point. For the obligation involved in this case is 
freedom from guilt. God the Father was satisfied 
in this matter, for Jesus was accepted to take the 
place of His people. And His bitterest enemies 
failed to find any fault at all in Him. 

2. A substitute must become such voluntarily. 
It can not be right to compel one person to take the 
place of another, and suffer or do anything in his 
stead, against his own will. It must be voluntary 
on his part. And so in the case of our substitute, 
the compact was entered into voluntarily. Away 
back in eternity, before the world was, the cove- 
nant of grace was confirmed between the Father 
and the adorable Son, in which the Son of God, of 
His own free will, covenanted to take the place of 
guilty man, though yet uncreated, and bear his sins 
and endure the curse of the law, and thus redeem 
man from sin and death. 

3. A substitute must have the dignity and the 
ability to fulfill all the conditions involved. First 
as to dignity. As an illustration, we will suppose 
a teacher in a high school is compelled to vacate 
his place for some time on account of protracted 



The Substitute. 



147 



sickness. A substitute must be found to take his 
place temporarily. There is in the community a 
man of high literary attainments, and, perhaps, in 
some respects, superior to the sick teacher; but, 
on account of bad habits and ungentlemanly con- 
duct, he has lowered himself in the estimation of 
the people. It would not be best to put such a 
man in the vacant chair in the school, because he 
has not the dignity to command the respect and 
obedience of the scholars. Again, the king dies 
and leaves a vacant throne. The heir to that 
throne is in his minority; so a regent must be 
found to substitute for the young king till he 
reaches his majority. It is not best in that case 
to give the regency to one of the great men of the 
realm who may have, by bad conduct, lowered him- 
self in the estimation of the people of the kingdom. 
He would lack the dignity to command their rev- 
erence and obedience. A substitute must have all 
the dignity necessary to fill his place with credit 
to himself and satisfaction to all concerned. 

As to our substitute, we find Him possessed of 
all the dignity that can be required of Him in 
heaven, on earth, and under the earth. The angels 
in heaven worship Him and adore Him as God 
over all, blessed forever. Satan and all his evil 
demons fear and tremble in His presence. 

II. Ability. A substitute must have the ability 
or power to do all things required and fulfill all the 
conditions perfectly. 

Under this head we will find illustrations im- 
practicable, as we must deal with matters that re- 
quire almighty power. By close attention here 
also we may see clearly the deep and basic doc- 
trines of grace that underlie the Christian's confi- 
dence and hope, and make his final salvation 
doubly sure. 



148 



Six Choice Sermons. 



(a) First, then, our Substitute, to fill the condi- 
tions, must have the ability to become one of us, 
by assuming our human nature and becoming a real 
man among men. This He did. He took not on 
Himself the nature of angels, but He took upon 
Himself the seed of Abraham. He conceived for 
Himself a body in the womb of the virgin by the 
Holy Spirit, and was born of a woman like His 
brethren, and became the son of man as well as 
the Son of God. This no other being could do. 
The most exalted of the angelic existences could 
never have become a man as our Saviour did. It 
was pre-eminently necessary for Him to become 
one of us that, as our substitute, He might live 
our life for us as it should be lived, and die in our 
place the just for the unjust, and thus set us free 
from sin and condemnation. 

(6) Again, He must have the ability to live a 
sinless life as a man in this sinful world. When 
He became a human being He placed Himself 
under the law, moral and ceremonial, and thus ob- 
ligated Himself to live up to that law in every par- 
ticular. And this He did. For, though subjected 
to every species of temptation that Satan himself 
and wicked men could devise, He came out un- 
touched by evil, and a conqueror in every par- 
ticular. He was tempted in all things like as we 
are, yet He was without sin. As our substitute 
He lived this holy and sinless life for His people. 
And in the judgment day and in eternity it will be 
as though we had lived without sin, for we did so 
live in our substitute. 

(c) And in the next place, He had the ability to 
assume our guilt and make it His own. "He was 
made sin for us." He became the guilty one in the 
eyes of the divine law, and was so considered and 
treated by divine justice. No man or angel can 
assume the moral guilt of another. He may as- 



The Substitute. 



149 



sume a debt or an obligation to do something for 
his fellow-man, but to assume the guilt of another 
requires the power of Deity. In the great day His 
people will be as free from sin and guilt as the 
holy angels in heaven, who have never sinned; be- 
cause Jesus, our substitute, took all our sins upon 
Himself and put them away forever by His aton- 
ing death. 

(cl) Again, He had the ability not only to as- 
sume our sins and guilt, but to actually suffer the 
penalty in our place. The sins of all His people 
were in reality put upon Him as His own, and the 
punishment due to us all was concentrated on Him 
alone. He trod the winepress alone. There was 
none to help Him. His arm alone brought salva- 
tion. It can not be said, of course, that He suf- 
fered exactly what His people would have had to 
suffer without a substitute, but He did really suf- 
fer what the divine law considered an equivalent ; 
so that justice was and is satisfied. And the poet 
beautifully expresses it when he says: 

" He dies, he dies, the lowly man of sorrows, 

On whom were laid our many griefs and woes; 
Our sins he bore, beneath God's awful billows, 
And he hath triumphed over all our foes/' 

Yes, He bore our sins, all of them. They were 
all foreknown, when the covenant of grace was en- 
tered into before the world was ; and they were all 
included, and ample provision made for all of 
them in the life, death, resurrection, and interces- 
sion of our divine substitute. He was not only 
our substitute on the cross, but He was the same 
in His life, in His death, in His resurrection, and 
still is and ever will be world without end. The 
final and eternal salvation of every one of His 
people is as sure, as the eternal life and glory of 
their Redeemer is sure. In the covenant of grace 



150 



Six Choice Sermons. 



there is and can be no flaw, no weakness, no mis- 
take. God's plans are perfect, both in conception 
and in execution. 

Then as the poet says again: 

" How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, 
Is laid for your faith in his excellent word." 

(e) In the next place, He had the ability to raise 
Himself from the dead. The darkest time, so far 
as God's people are concerned, was that memor- 
able "three days and three nights/' during which 
the Lord Jesus lay in the silent tomb in the cold 
embrace of death. All heaven must have been in 
tears while its music was silent. Satan and his 
hosts, and all the wicked Jews who hounded Him 
to the cross and the grave, were in exultation and 
joy. Their dark counsels had prevailed. The Son 
of man, on whom all the children of God in heaven 
and on earth were depending, was in His grave, 
and that grave sealed and guarded by all the power 
of imperial Rome. His few faithful disciples were 
hidden away from their enemies, and in despair. 
But on the third day, as the rosy light of morning 
began to gleam on the lofty pinnacles of the tem- 
ple in Jerusalem, a stream of lightning seemed to 
descend from heaven, the Roman guard were terri- 
fied and became as dead men, the seal of the sepul- 
cher was broken, the stone rolled away, and He, 
who had lived as Jesus of Nazareth, and had died 
as a malefactor on the cross, rose triumphant from 
the grave, a conqueror over sin, death, and hell. 

" He lives! He lives, what glorious consolation! 
Exalted at His Father's own right hand." 

Yes, He had the power to rise from the dead. 
And as He lived and died as our substitute, He also 
rose as our substitute. And as all mankind died 



The Substitute. 



151 



in Adam when he sinned, so all God's children, 
chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, 
virtually rose in Him as their second federal head, 
and will really rise in his glorious image in the 
fullness of time. He, the first fruit, we, the har- 
vest in its season. 

(/) And as He stood on the brink of that empty 
grave, as it were, He exclaimed, in words that must 
have thrilled heaven and earth with joy, "All 
power is given unto me in heaven and on earth." 
And in these words He especially meant that He 
had almighty power to keep and to save all His 
people, whose substitute He had become, without 
a single exception. And, moreover, as He is not 
only their substitute, but their shepherd also, He 
is under an eternal and irreversible obligation to 
bring every one of the sheep, whom the Father has 
put in His charge into the final, upper fold in the 
New Jerusalem. When the shepherd of old 
brought the sheep of his charge at eventide to the 
fold, he stood by the wicket gate and counted, as 
they passed in, one by one. If all were there, and 
safe in the fold, the shepherd was satisfied. And 
so of our shepherd it is written : "He shall see 
of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied." 
"Of all whom thou hast given me I have lost noth- 
ing." 

Now, in conclusion, we will read the text again : 
"For he was made sin for us, who knew no sin, 
that we might be made the righteousness of God 
in him." Our sins were all transferred to Him as 
our divine substitute, and He redeemed us from 
them and removed them as far from us as the 
east is from the west, never to be remembered 
any more. So we, his people, were justified and 
made innocent. But this is not all, as is so 
strongly expressed in the text. It says we are 
made the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ our 



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substitute. Not clothed in righteousness — that 
would not be enough. A leper clothed in royal 
robes would be a leper still. Take the leprosy 
away and cleanse him thoroughly from its pollu- 
tion, and then all will be well. So God's people 
are not simply clothed in His righteousness, but 
made the righteousness of God itself. Christians 
are one with Christ, as Christ is one with the Fa- 
ther. And thus, in this glorious triple union, the 
children of God, redeemed by the blood of Jesus 
are to be higher and more glorious than the angels. 

Now, with these blessed truths in our hearts, let 
us be happy and full of joy. Let it be our highest 
aim in life to love, honor, and obey our adorable 
Lord. Let us feel sure that He will do all things 
for our good. And no matter how dark the way 
sometimes appears; and no matter how hard our 
lots may seem to be, let us do as the poet says : 

" And so beside the silent sea 

I wait the muffled oar: 
No harm from him can come to me 
On ocean or on shore. 

" I know not where his islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond his love and care." 



SERMON II. 



"The King in His Beauty/' 

The text is in three parts, and is in Isaiah 33. The 
first part is, "Who among ns shall dwell ivith the 
devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with 
everlasting burnings?'* (verse 1J+). The second 
is, "Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty'* 
(verse 17). The third is, "And the inhabitant 
shall not say I am sick: the people that dwell 
therein shall be forgiven their iniquity" (verse 
U). 

The answer to the question under the first head 
is, in part, "He that walketh righteously and speak- 
eth uprightly/' showing that the righteous are 
meant. This is, of course, exactly the reverse of 
what we would first suppose. But let us look into 
the deeper meaning of the passage, and see if it 
is not, after all, in harmony with the fundamental 
principles of theology and Scripture. God is often 
represented in the Bible under the figure or simili- 
tude of fire. Thus He appeared to Moses in the 
bush as a flame of fire. Ex. 3 :2. And again on 
Mount Sinai God appeared to Moses and to all 
Israel in fire. "And Mount Sinai was altogether 
on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it 
in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the 
smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked 
greatly." And in Ex. 40 :38 we read : "For the 
cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, 
and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the 
house of Israel, throughout all their journeys." 
A chariot of fire and horses of fire carried Elijah 
up to heaven. II Kings 2 :11. Again, Elisha's serv- 
ant saw the mountain full of horses and chariots 
of fire. II Kings 6 :17. And when Ezekiel saw vis- 



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ions of God, it was like fire in appearance. Eze. 1 :4. 
Daniel likewise saw one in a vision and his face 
was as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as 
lamps of fire. Dan. 10 :6. And in Heb. 12 :29 we 
read: "For onr God is a consuming fire." With 
these texts before us, and especially the last, we 
may conclude that Jehovah is by nature a devour- 
ing fire, so far as evil is concerned; but blissful 
happiness to the righteous. God, then, may be con- 
sidered as an element, and that a universal ele- 
ment, which is blessed peace, joy, and happiness to 
the pure, innocent, and good; but devouring fire 
to all that is evil. When Satan and his angels fell 
they found themselves in a lake of fire, because 
they were sinful. The same element that was be- 
fore bliss to them was now fire. But, says one, 
why are we in this sinful world, and all sinners 
ourselves, too, not consumed? This question is 
easily answered. Jesus Christ is the mediator be- 
tween God and His wrath and this world of sin- 
ners. And this has been the case ever since Adam 
fell, and even before that in effect. Because before 
the world was, God the Father and God the Son 
entered into a covenant to that effect. So, then, 
as long as this world stands, and as long as God's 
purposes are being carried on, Jesus will be the 
shield, so to speak, that wards off the fire from this 
earth and all on it, There was a time when the 
Son left Sodom and Gomorrah unprotected for a 
moment, and we all know what followed. And 
this was a warning to all generations. And in the 
New Testament we read of the great day of God, 
when the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, 
and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. 
II Pet. 3 :12. So, then, when Christ shall leave the 
throne of grace, where He now sits as mediator, 
and takes His seat on the great white throne of 
judgment, the screen or shield will be taken away 



The King in His Beauty. 



from between this earth and the wrath of Almighty 
God, and the fire will naturally wrap it in flames. 
But as the righteous were taken out of Sodom, and 
the Christians w r ere all enabled to leave Jerusalem, 
before the awful judgments fell upon those devoted 
cities, so all God's people will be caught up in the 
air to meet the Lord coming in the clouds of 
heaven, before the dreadful flood of fire falls upon 
the earth. 

Now let us illustrate the idea of God's being an 
element of happiness to the righteous and of fire to 
the wicked. 

Suppose we are walking along the bank of a 
beautiful mountain stream. And after a while we 
come to a most charming spot, where shady trees, 
green grass and blooming flowers intermingle. We 
sit down on a rock to enjoy the enchanting scenery 
for a while. All at once we discover a cocoon hang- 
ing on a low shrub, where it had been buffeted by 
wintry blasts for months before. And we notice 
that this little rough, unsightly thing is beginning 
to open, and something seeming to be alive is com- 
ing out of it. And behold, in a few minutes a but- 
terfly crawls out into the warm May sunshine. In 
a short time her wings become dry and she spreads 
them, as if to see whether or not they will serve her 
in flight. All at once she rises on her soft, bril- 
liant wings of many colors, and floats, a thing of 
beauty, on the balmy air. Soon she alights on a 
flower no less beautiful than herself, and seems to 
be supremely happy in her new life and in this, to 
her, new world. 

Just then a boy appears on the scene with rod 
and line. He baits his hook and casts it into the 
brook. In a few minutes he lands a beautiful 
spotted trout and tosses him on the greensward 
just under the butterfly. But now we are struck 
with the contrast. The butterfly seems supremely 



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happy in the bright sunshine and air, but the fish 
is dying in agony in the same element. So what 
is life and joy to the one is torment and death to 
the other. 

So, when the bloodwashd soul of a Christian 
emerges from the old body, as the butterfly did 
from its chrysalis, it finds itself in a state of bliss 
because it is in its native element. For the Chris- 
tian, and Christ, and God are all in nature one. 
Or, in the language of Jesus, they are all one. But 
when the soul of the sinner is removed out of the 
shielding protection of the mediation of Christ, as 
the fish was lifted out of the water, it will be in 
torment, because it will be in and exposed to an 
element to which it is unsuited, as the fish in the 
air. 

Under the second head the text is, "Thine eyes 
shall see the King in His beauty." That is, the 
righteous in heaven, being in his own element, 
shall be permitted to see the King in His beauty. 
The King is, of course, God and the Lamb. For 
we read, in Revelation, that they are the light of 
the Holy City, the New Jerusalem. The beauty 
spoken of here has reference to the glory of the 
King Himself and of all things connected with 
Him, or all the beauty that is the result of His 
glorious presence. 

To illustrate this point, we will take the sun in 
our system. The sun is the most glorious object 
we can see in this life. But every one knows that 
it is impossible to look upon the sun so as to see 
his glory and beauty in all its perfection. But to 
see the sun in his beauty we must look, not at the 
sun itself so much as upon the effects of the sun in 
this world. For the sun is the source or the re- 
vealer of all beauty. A great deal of the beauty we 
see is dependent on what we call color. And the 
sun really makes all colors and all shades of colors 



The King in His Beauty. 



157 



both in nature and art. For it is said that sun- 
light is composed of seven different colors. When 
these are all properly mingled together they make 
white light, as it is called, or the natural light of 
the sun. For when they are all reflected back to 
the eye from any object, like snow, that object is 
white. But when all the rays are absorbed by an 
object and none thrown back to the eye, then that 
object is what we call black, as coal, for instance. 
When only its red rays are reflected from an ob- 
ject, as a rose, we call that a red rose. So all the 
different colors in nature are the result of the ab- 
sorbing and reflecting of certain rays of sunlight. 
And in art, also, all the colors produced by pencil 
and brush are dependent on the same light of the 
sun. Then, again, the beauty of symmetry and 
form are revealed by light. If one should go into 
an art gallery in the dark hours of midnight, he 
would see no beauty, though the great hall should 
be filled with the most beautiful things ever pro- 
duced by the genius and skill of man. But let the 
blessed sunlight stream in through the open win- 
dows, and lo, what beauty is revealed on all sides ! 

So, to see the sun in its beauty, then, is to see the 
sun and all the richness of beauty it creates or 
reveals. 

And in the same way, to see the King in His 
beauty in heaven, is to see Him and all the glorious 
beauty which the light of His face creates or re- 
veals in that world, where nothing is defaced by 
evil, but where all is pure and rich with heavenly 
beauty. It is in fact a paradise in which all that 
one sees is surpassingly beautiful to look upon, 
and in which all that one hears is rich in harmony, 
music, and love, and in which all that one feels is 
the result of the beauty of holiness. 

So, then, we shall see the King in His beauty. 

Under the third head, the text is, "And the in- 



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habitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that 
dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity." 
Sickness is the fruit of sin. As there is no sin in 
heaven, there can be no sickness. The sins of the 
people shall be forgiven, and they shall be holy. 
Sickness is the heritage of all on earth to a greater 
or less extent. The infant in its innocence may be 
sick, old age with its gray hairs must be sick some- 
times. The wicked get sick in their wickedness, 
the righteous are often afflicted, though walking 
in the way of God. None are exempt here. The 
very air is charged with sickness, and the water 
we drink and the food we eat may carry the germs 
of sickness to our systems. But in the pure atmos- 
phere of the heavenly home, untainted by evil and 
unhallowed by sin, there never can be any sickness. 
Here, when friend meets friend, the first word is, 
"Are you well today?" But no such language is 
ever heard in heaven. Heaven's vocabulary has 
no terms denoting sickness, pain, sorrow, or trouble 
of any kind. Such things are there unknown. How 
sweet it will be when the poor, suffering and sor- 
rowing ones of this sin-cursed earth reach that 
happy abode, where the inhabitant shall never say, 
"I am sick," but where each one, in the fullness 
of happiness, shall see the King in His beauty. 
Amen. 



SERMON III. 



The Rock. 

We know of nothing in nature so strong, so 
solid, and so immovable as a great rock. And as 
rocks were familiar objects in Bible lands, we need 
not be surprised to find frequent reference to them 
in a figurative w^ay. A solid and unfailing foun- 
dation in any sense was a rock. Anything strong 
and safe was said to be a rock. God Himself was 
spoken of as a rock. The strongest of all conceiv- 
able places was called the munitions of rocks. 

This sermon will contain four heads, and a dif- 
ferent text will be used for each head. 

I. First, then, we have the foundation rock. In 
Matt. 7 :24, we have these words : "Therefore who- 
soever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth 
them, I will liken him to a wise man which built 
his house upon a rock." A house built upon a 
solid rock as a foundation was the safest conceiv- 
able. So man's hope of heaven must be founded 
upon something safe and abiding, and that is Jesus 
Christ and Him crucified, the only hope of glory. 
All other foundations are but sinking sand, and 
will fail in the testing time. Then, it is the first 
and supreme duty of every one to build his house 
of hope and Christian character upon the sure and 
never-failing foundation. And this is done by do- 
ing the things He has told us to do in His word. 
We are to hear and do, and God will take care of 
us in life, in death, at the judgment, and in eter- 
nity. In this land of Bibles, churches, and Sunday 
schools, all may hear and all may do the things 
required, so that the soul's house of hope may be 
founded upon the solid rock of God's word which 
can not fail. In this case each one must act for 
himself. Each sinner must repent for himself, and 



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believe for himself, and follow Christ for himself. 
Each one must give account of himself. To go to 
heaven, one must start right. None crossed the 
flood but those in the ark. None escaped the touch 
of the death angel in Egypt but those who had the 
passover blood over their doors. Noah obeyed God 
and was safe in the flood. The Israelites in Egypt 
obeyed God, and the angel sent forth to slay the 
first born in each house passed over them. And all 
now, who do what J esus says will find at last their 
house as safe as Noah's ark, or as the Hebrew's 
bloodstained house in Egypt. The true Christian 
begins by building his house upon Christ the Rock. 

II. The second head is the sustaining rock. In 
Ex. 17 :6, we read : "And thou shalt smite the rock, 
and there shall come water out of it, that the 
people may drink." The Israelites had crossed the 
Red Sea and had come into a desert country where 
there was nothing to sustain life. The God who 
had brought them out of Egyptian bondage by a 
high hand must give them food and water, or they 
will all die in the wilderness. He gave them bread 
from heaven to eat, and told Moses to smite the 
rock in Horeb, and water came forth out of it so 
that the people could drink. Thus the rock fur- 
nished water for God's ancient people in their jour- 
ney to the promised land. For the water flowing 
as a river from that rock followed them in their 
journeys until they came to a place where there 
was water. And again, when they reached another 
place where there was no water, Moses, at God's 
command, brought water out of another rock. A 
rock then furnished the means of preserving the 
lives of the people in the desert. And the apostle 
Paul says : "That rock was Christ." That is, as 
the rock furnished natural water for the bodies of 
the people in the wilderness, so Christ the true 
rock, of which the rock in Horeb was a type, sup- 



Symbolism of the Rock. 



161 



plies living water for the souls of true Christians 
now, who are the real Israel of God, or the true 
church of which the ancient Israel was a type. 

The Israelites in the wilderness, who had to be 
fed and given drink in a miraculous way, were an 
example to show us now how God sustains us in a 
spiritual manner. As the desert had nothing for 
the bodies of the people to live on, so this world has 
nothing for the souls of the people to live on. 
And as the people of Israel would have perished 
without food and water in the desert, so the souls 
of people will perish in this world and be lost with- 
out the bread of life and the water of life which 
Christ alone can give. And as the people needed 
this life-sustaining water every day all through 
their journey ings, so Christians now need and 
must have this living water which Christ gives. 
What a blessed privilege it was to the people then 
to go to the rock, or to the stream from the rock, 
and drink ! And the privilege to the Christian now 
is proportionately greater, as the immortal soul 
is more valuable than the mortal body. For the 
water of life to us now is free and ever flowing. 
And, moreover, it is within us a never-failing well 
of water springing up into everlasting life. By 
faith and obedience we drink of and are bathed in 
its life-sustaining floods. And when we leave this 
life and this world, we will find this same water of 
life in heaven no longer a stream from a rock, or a 
well in the heart, but a mighty river flowing from 
the throne of God and the Lamb, and the tree of 
life bearing perpetual fruit on each side thereof. 
Let us be thankful, then, for the water that flows 
from Christ the Rock. 

III. The third head is the rock of protection. In 
Ex. 33 :22 : "I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, 
and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by." 
Moses wished to see the glory of God. But the 
ll 



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Lord told him that no man could see His glory, or 
His face, and live. However, as Moses had found 
grace in His sight, He told him that there was a 
cleft in a rock, and that He would put him in that 
and cover him with His hand while He was pass- 
ing by, and that Moses could see His back parts 
after He had passed. 

The main thought here is the hiding and cover- 
ing of Moses in the cleft of the rock for his protec- 
tion. A strong rock affords protection. A ship- 
wrecked sailor on a high rock is safe. A rock fort- 
ress, as Gibraltar, is the strongest and safest of all. 
In the cleft of a rock is the safest of all places to 
hide in a storm. So the Christian under the cover, 
or in the cleft, of Christ the rock is and ever will 
be safe. The Christian in Christ is safe because 
the Christian is one with Christ, and Christ is one 
with God ; God is supreme over all. None can ever 
pluck us out of His hand. Then let our prayer as 
well as song ever be : 

" Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in thee." 

IV. The fourth and last head is : The rock of 
comfort and peace. In Isa. 32 :2 we read : "And a 
man shall be as the shadow of a great rock in a 
weary land." The word man here applies best to 
the man Christ Jesus. "The shadow of a great 
rock in a weary land" carries with it the idea of 
one in need of comfort. A weary land must mean 
a hot, dreary, desert land. People in the East were 
and are familiar with both deserts and rocks. Now 
let us see if we can picture a scene that will fill the 
conditions here suggested. A traveler is crossing 
a dreary desert. He has by some means missed an 
oasis or resting place that he fully expected to 
reach by high noon. And now it is the middle of 



Symbolism of the Rock. 



163 



the afternoon, and lie is almost exhausted with 
heat and fatigue. He is becoming discouraged, if 
not hopeless. Nothing can be seen to offer the 
least hope of comfort and safety. But after strug- 
gling on for another hour, he begins to see some- 
thing looming up on the distant burning horizon. 
As he draws nearer he soon learns that it is a great 
rock, offering comfort and peace to the weary trav- 
eler. On reaching it, he finds that there is on the 
shady side of it a hollow space where a few trees 
grow T , and wiiere there are green grass and fresh 
flowers, and, best of all, a spring of cool and re- 
freshing water. He is comforted in the shadow of 
a great rock in a weary land. 

In our journey through this life, we often meet 
with experiences in which we need the shadowing 
power of Christ our rock, who says: "Come unto 
me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will 
give you rest." When the world, the flesh, and the 
devil unite all their forces to harass and to harm 
us, then it is such a blessing to seek the covert of 
the great rock in the weary land, in the closet, or in 
the house of God among the people of God, and 
there find that comfort and peace the world can 
neither give nor take away. And when trouble 
comes, as come it will to all in one form or another, 
and its waves seem to roll over us and to hide the 
light of life, how sweet it is to find even then the 
shadow of the rock, and to read the grand words 
of the apostle Paul : "All things work together for 
good to them that love God." And while resting 
there, we can remember that the trials and suffer- 
ings of this life will work out for us a far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 

And even when the shadow of death is enfolding 
us in its gloomy wings, we can still hide under the 
covert of the rock, and feel the comfort of these 
words: "Oh, death, where is thy sting; oh, grave, 



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where is thy victory?" The sting of death is sin. 
But Jesus bore our sins for us and buried the sting 
in His own heart. And He rose again victor over 
sin and death, with the keys of death and of hell 
in His hands. So by His death and resurrection 
and ascension and intercession he has robbed 
death of its sting and the grave of its gloom. So, 
when we come to die, may each one sing with Ten- 
nyson : 

" Sunset and evening star, 
And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar 

When I put out to sea. 
But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home. 

" Twilight and evening bell. 
And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell 

When I embark. 
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see the Pilot face to face, 
When I have crossed the bar." 



SERMON IV. 



Saved From Sin. 

Text: "Thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He 
shall save His people from their sins/ 7 — Matt. 
1:21. 

The word Jesus means saviour. Hence we may 
read, "Thou shalt call His name Saviour." The 
object of the Saviour in coming into this world was 
to save His people from their sins. His people are, 
in the simplest way to express it, those who believe 
on Him and obey Him. In John 1 :12 we read that 
He gave power to become the sons of God "even to 
them that believe on His name." In Heb. 5 :9, we 
have these words: "He became the author of eter- 
nal salvation unto all them that obey Him." 

In discussing this subject, I shall try to show 
how a sinner is saved. In other words, I want to 
give the steps or processes of the work. And in 
these several steps it will be shown that, in some 
respects, the sinner becomes a co-worker with God. 

The first step is hearing the word. Ephe. 2 :8 : 
"By grace are ye saved through faith." Grace, 
then, is the cause. Faith, the instrumental cause. 
Faith, then is a necessity. But how does faith 
come? Bom. 10:17: "So then faith cometh by 
hearing, and hearing by the word of God." So, 
then, the sinner must hear the word of God. For 
he can not believe on one of whom he has not heard. 
The first step, then, is to hear the gospel. Hence 
Jesus said preach the gospel to every creature. 
The great duty of the church, then, is to have the 
gospel preached to all people. No sinner can ever 
be saved who knows nothing of the gospel. This 
is the "power of God unto salvation to every one 
that believeth." The knowledge of the gospel gen- 



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erally comes by hearing it preached. This is the 
great and the general means. But it may come 
through reading, or hearing it talked of in the 
home, or by the wayside. It is the highest duty 
and privilege of every one to hear the gospel for 
himself. He owes this to himself. No one can 
hear for another. The first step, then, is to hear. 

The second step is conviction. This is pre-emi- 
nently the work of the Holy Spirit. The sinner is 
spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. The Spirit 
of God must quicken the sinner's spirit and enable 
him to feel and realize himself a guilty sinner be- 
fore God. Ephe. 2 :1 : "And you hath he quick- 
ened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." Now, 
what is conviction? Let us see if we can't get the 
simplest possible definition of this word, and this 
work of the Spirit of God, that comes through the 
preaching of the gospel. It is, in its simplest form, 
a serious and anxious feeling in regard to one's 
own spiritual condition. Again, it is a realizing 
of one's state spiritually as being bad or danger- 
ous. This the sinner in his dead state spiritually 
could not do without the quickening of God's 
Spirit. This conviction, however, may vary in in- 
tensity, in different people, and under different 
circumstances. 

The conviction of the wicked Jews on the day of 
Pentecost was intense. They were cut to the heart. 
And in their distress they cried out : "Men and 
brethren, what shall we do?" Acts 2:37. These 
were great sinners. They had crucified Jesus, who 
was both Lord and Christ. Now, when a man 
wakes up from a spell of hard drinking, and comes 
to realize that he had, while in that state, mur- 
dered his own wife, would not his feeling, on realiz- 
ing this, be much more intense than if he had com- 
mitted some slight offense? These men really 
thought, in their ignorance and under their lead- 



Saved From Sin. 



167 



ers, that they were crucifying a disturber of the 
peace. But now, on hearing Peter's preaching, 
they become convinced, through the Spirit of God, 
of the awful mistake they made, and of the awful 
crime they had committed, and their revulsion of 
feeling is so great that they are constrained to cry 
out. 

But when this same apostle Peter preached, on 
another occasion, to Cornelius and his friends, 
their sensation of conviction was of a gentle or 
mild type, which made no demonstration what- 
ever; yet they were as truly converted as those at 
the Pentecostal meeting. So, then, when a great 
sinner is awakened, we may expect intense convic- 
tion as a general thing; but with one whose life 
has been of a good, moral type, we may as a gen- 
eral rule, find a gentle or mild type of conviction. 
So much for different people. 

Again, circumstances have much to do as to the 
degree of intensity in conviction. The jailer was 
awakened by an earthquake, both from his natural 
sleep and from his spiritual sleep, and, of course, 
his sense of danger was intensified to such a degree 
that he showed his excitement by crying out : 
"Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" But only 
a little while before this there was a prayer meet- 
ing at a riverside near by, where Paul preached, 
and the Lord opened the heart of Lydia, who, with- 
out any excitement, attended to the things spoken 
by Paul, and was as really saved as the excited 
jailer. The second step, then, is conviction, which 
all who hear the gospel receive more or less. 

The third step is, yielding to the Spirit's influ- 
ence in conviction. Here I will have to differ with 
some who teach that the Holy Spirit's work can 
not be resisted. I take the ground that God deals 
with men as free agents. He could not accept wor- 
ship or service that had to be forced upon one. It 



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must be free from the heart of men or angels. So, 
when the Holy Spirit convinces the sinner through 
the hearing of the gospel, it then becomes the sin- 
ner's high privilege to yield to this conviction, and 
confess himself as such to God, and before men. 
But, says one, can the sinner resist the conviction 
that is thus awakened in his heart by the Holy 
Spirit? To answer this question intelligently and 
according to the Scriptures, we will have to define 
conviction further, as general and effectual. Gen- 
eral conviction is that of which we have been speak- 
ing mostly. It is that serious and solemn feeling 
that all who hear the gospel experience to some 
degree and at some times in their lives. This may 
be and is resisted. "Ye do always resist the Holy 
Ghost : as your fathers did, so do ye." Acts 7 :51. 

But when the sinner yields to the Spirit's influ- 
ence or call, then the conviction, or the call, be- 
comes effectual, and he no longer wishes to resist. 
For when a man has yielded to the conviction or 
influence of the Holy Spirit, he then has virtually 
turned his back on the world and the evil one, and 
feels a real desire to forsake sin and serve God. 
And this leads to or is the beginning of the next 
step, which is repentance towards God and its twin 
sister, "faith in Jesus Christ." When man begins 
to acknowledge that he has done wrong, he then 
begins to repent of that wrong, whether committed 
against God or man. So, yielding is to repent. 
But what is real repentance? It is deep sorrow in 
the heart for sin, which leads one to hate the sin 
and turn from it in reality and in truth. And it 
leads to sincere confession of sin, and earnest seek- 
ing after forgiveness. It leads, also, to deep humil- 
ity of heart — a humility that banishes all pride 
and self-sufficiency. The sinner must, so to speak, 
go down in dust and ashes before God, and feel 
himself as unworthy as the prodigal did, and be 



Saved From Sin. 



169 



willing to accept anything that God in His mercy 
may be willing to give. Then faith in Jesus Christ 
and Him crucified, which the man may have had 
all along in some sense, becomes active and leads 
to trust and obedience. All this brings the heart of 
the sinner into that state in which the conditions 
of salvation are met, and then follows the next 
step, which is conversion, or the new birth. This 
is wholly the work of the Spirit of God alone, with- 
out the aid of any ceremony whatever. The body 
enters this world by natural birth; the soul enters 
the kingdom of heaven by supernatural birth 
through the power of the Holy Spirit. One can 
not see this world, or experience it in any sense, 
except he is born into it ; and so one can not see, 
or perceive, or experience the kingdom of heaven, 
except he is born into it from above. "Except a 
man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of 
God." John 3 :3. 

The next step, if I may so term it, is the indwell- 
ing of the Spirit. When a person is born of the 
Spirit, then his body becomes a temple, in which 
the Holy Spirit of God takes up His abode. The 
object of this indwelling is to teach, to comfort, to 
guide, to enlighten, and to help in all needed ways. 
He teaches the Christian to a better understanding 
of the Scriptures, and how to pray. He comforts 
the child of God in many ways. Christ called Him 
the Comforter. He guides by impressing the mind 
and conscience in right ways. He enlightens and 
illuminates the mind, and thus enlarges the vision 
of the Christian, especially in spiritual things. He 
helps the child of God to live right, to shun evil, 
and to suffer if need be. And when the Christian 
stumbles and falls into sin in any way, the Spirit 
helps him to repent and thus get right with God 
again. 



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In these several steps one may become a Chris- 
tian and be preserved as such through grace. For 
the plan of salvation is perfect. It contains no 
flaw. It covers every emergency. It is devised and 
executed by infinite wisdom and power. When 
Jesus died for His people, He died for all their 
sins. They were all foreknown and all provided 
for in the atonement. The debt was all paid. It is 
not our love to God that keeps us. But it is God's 
love that holds us. "Who shall separate us from 
the love of God in Christ Jesus?" Rom. 8:35. If 
Christians sometimes do wrong, and there are none 
that do good and sin not, it is their duty to confess 
it to God, who says that "He is faithful and just 
to forgive," Faithful because He has promised, 
and just because the sin was atoned for by Christ 
on the cross. But, says one, there are many sins 
of ignorance. And, again, a Christian may sin and 
then die suddenly, having no time to repent or con- 
fess. Well, all this is covered by the intercession 
of Christ, He died for our sins, He rose again for 
our justification, and He has ascended to heaven 
to the right hand of the Father to intercede for us. 

But our salvation will not be complete in all 
respects till our bodies are also redeemed in the 
resurrection and made holy, like unto the glorified 
body of our Redeemer now in heaven. 



SERMON V. 



Retribution. 

Text: "As thou hast done, it shall be clone unto 
thee.'' — Obadiah 15. 

The prophet Obadiah denounced judgments 
against Edom, or the Edomites, for their bad treat- 
ment of the Jews in their distress, and for rejoic- 
ing over their calamities. The Edomites were de- 
scendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob, both of 
whom were the sons of Isaac. Jacob and Esau had 
a falling out in their youth. Esau was the first 
born and so thought he ought to have the birthright, 
though he had sold it to Jacob. Jacob, however, 
got the birthright, not because he had bought it, 
but because God had said before the children were 
born that the elder should serve the younger. On 
account of this early feud in the family of Isaac, 
the two brothers and their descendants were never 
afterwards fully reconciled. When the children of 
Jacob or Israel were passing through the wilder- 
ness from Egypt to the promised land, the Edom- 
ites would not let them pass through their borders. 
And so they had to go a long and painful distance 
to surround the country of Edom, or, as it was 
later called Idumea. And after the Israelites were 
settled in their own country, the Edomites were 
always jealous of them, and took every advantage 
of them possible to harass them or to do them an 
injury. And when Judah and Jerusalem were in 
dire distress on account of the war waged against 
them by Nebuchadnezzar, the Edomites were glad 
and rejoiced over their downfall, and took pleasure 
in persecuting those of them who were trying to 
escape. All these things gave rise to Obadiah's 



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Six Choice Sermons. 



prophecy, and to the text. "As thou hast done, it 
shall be done unto thee," And it was so done. 

The first head of the sermon, then, is, To show 
how God has always sent retribution upon those 
nations which have mistreated the Jewish people. 
It was not long after God had destroyed Jerusalem 
by the hand of the king of Babylon, before he sent 
a more terrible destruction upon Idumea or Edom, 
by the hand of the same Nebuchadnezzar. And not 
only upon them, but also upon all the nations and 
peoples round about, that had so long mistreated 
the Jews, God's ancient people. And mark the 
difference God made between his people and their 
enemies. The Jews were punished. They were car- 
ried into captivity. But at the end of seventy years 
they were delivered and brought back to their own 
country again. But what of Edom and all those 
other nations which maltreated the Jews? They 
were utterly destroyed, and have ever since been 
lost sight of in history as such. Even Babylon, 
the means that God used to punish the Jews in 
their wickedness, was, in a few years afterwards, 
destroyed root and branch. The nation and the 
city are no more. The Babylonians were punished, 
though God sent them to afflict the Jews. Because 
they, in afflicting the Jews, did it with an evil in- 
tent. 

The next nation to be noticed as persecuting the 
Jews is the empire of Rome. God used this empire 
at first to punish the Jewish nation, after they had 
rejected and crucified their King, the Lord Jesus, 
as he had Nebuchadnezzar before. But the Romans 
persisted in persecuting and killing the Jewish 
people for centuries after Jerusalem fell, just be- 
cause they hated them and wished to destroy them 
from the face of the earth. And as they did and 
wished to do, it was done to them as the text says. 
For God finally completely destroyed the whole 



Retribution. 



173 



Roman Empire, and there is now no such people as 
Romans on the face of the earth. Rut the Jews 
still exist as a peculiar people, preserved by the 
overruling hand of Providence. 

Then comes Spain as the next nation who so 
cruelly mistreated God's ancient people. About 
the beginning of modern times, during and after 
the Reformation period, many nations of Europe 
were very cruel to the dispersed Jews. But none 
were so intensely cruel as Spain. And for several 
centuries they, as well as Christians, were hunted 
down and put to death, with every species of tor- 
ment that the ingenuity of wicked men could de- 
vise. Spain, during the sixteenth century, was one 
of the richest and most powerful nations in Europe. 
But where is she now? She is not destroyed, but 
sunk so low that she is a byword, so to speak, 
among the nations of the earth. 

The last to be noticed in this connection is Rus- 
sia. Since the other nations of Europe have be- 
come more civilized they have left off, to a large 
extent, their malice and cruelty towards the Jews, 
but Russia has been for a long time, and still is, 
the worst enemy on earth to them. And any stu- 
dent of the history of modern Europe can see, at 
a glance, that Russia is under a ban or a curse of 
some kind. Though covering more territory than 
any other country on earth, she is cursed with a 
despotic government, torn by internal dissensions, 
and her armies, as we have seen in late years, are 
helpless in the hand of a little island empire like 
Japan, not as large as one of her provinces. Seek 
as we may for the causes of all this, we must at 
last come to this conclusion, that Russia is under 
a curse, because of her continual and relentless 
cruelty to the Jews. Retribution is falling on Rus- 
sia, as on Idumea of old, and what the end is to be, 
no one can tell. 



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Six Choice Sermons. 



And I am proud to say just here that our coun- 
try, the United States of America, is the only 
nation of people in the civilized world that is abso- 
lutely free from the persecution of the Jewish 
people. And God's peculiar blessing is to-day, and 
has been from the first, resting upon our country 
and our people, as upon no other country on the 
face of the earth. The words of the text can be 
applied both ways. We have been good to the 
Jews, God has been good to us. Edom was cruel 
to the Jews, and God was cruel to them. "As thou 
hast done, it shall be done unto thee." 

The second head pertains to nations that mis- 
treat the true church. The Roman Empire, Spain, 
and Russia have already been disposed of on this 
subject, because they were, or are, cruel to both 
Jews and Christians. Catholic and Mohammedan 
countries are now the chief enemies of true Chris- 
tianity; such, for instance, as Italy and Turkey. 
The truth is, there is no real prosperous and flour- 
ishing country today that is under the control of 
popery or Mohammedanism. All really prosper- 
ous nations of Europe or America are Protestant, 
not Catholic. Mohammedan countries, like Tur- 
key, are under a withering curse, and will be as 
long as they continue haters of Christianity. And 
in the American continents, the difference between 
Protestant and Catholic is so marked that it must 
be noticed. Why the great difference between the 
United States, and Mexico and the Republics of 
South America? The first is Protestant, and the 
home and asylum of the true church of God. The 
latter are Catholic to the core, and persecutors, as 
far as possible of true Christians, 

European countries today are prosperous in pro- 
portion as they are Protestant and friendly to real 
Christianity. But, says one, France is an excep- 
tion. Rut my reply is, France is an anomaly. She 



Retribution. 



175 



is now under a deeper and more far-reaching curse 
than any other nation in Europe. She is more 
deeply dyed by the blood of martyrs than any other 
except Spain itself. Two of the most bloody mas- 
sacres that have ever blotted the pages of history 
occurred in France. The first was in the early 
part of the thirteenth century. When the pope 
and his church had become unusually active in 
killing out the true church, and when all kings and 
princes and barons were forbidden to harbor them 
in their territories, it so happened that in certain 
southern provinces of France there were multi- 
tudes of them. And as they were good, industrious, 
and obedient citizens the barons would not carry 
out the demands of the pope. So he ordered a cru- 
sade of the worst men that could be mustered in all 
Europe, and sent them down there and butchered 
tens of thousands of men, women, and children, 
and made the country almost a desert. 

The second massacre was that of St. Bartholo- 
mew, which occurred on the 24th of August, 1572. 
This was the slaughter of the Huguenots, a body 
of Protestant Christians who lived in France. 
This slaughter was sanctioned by the king and his 
advisers. The stain of these atrocious crimes was 
not washed out even by the blood of the French 
Revolution and the Eeign of Terror something 
over a hundred years ago. And now, though 
France is nominally Catholic, her leading men of 
influence have virtually rejected God and all reli- 
gion whatever, and are trying to hurl the whole 
nation into Atheism. Poor France! Having re- 
jected true Christianity, and having become dis- 
gusted with Catholicism, what else could she do? 
"As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee." 
The end is not yet. What God has in store for 
France, future generations may tell, but we can't. 



176 



Six Choice Sermons. 



Under the third head we will apply the text to 
individual retribution. 

The first case to be noted is that of Joseph's 
brethren. They hated him and finally sold him 
into slavery, hoping to get clear of both him and 
his dreams. But God's purposes must and will 
stand. In a few years Joseph had passed from 
slavery through imprisonment to be the second in 
power in the kingdom of Egypt. His father and 
brethren are sore distressed by the famine that 
came upon all lands. Jacob, hearing there was 
corn in Egypt, sends his ten sons, the ones who 
had sold Joseph, into Egypt to buy food. On their 
arrival they bow themselves down humbly to the 
governor of the land, who was none other than 
Joseph, who knew them but was himself a stranger 
to them. He treated them harshly and called them 
spies, and put them all in prison for three days. 
This he did to see if they were still the hard-hearted 
and cruel men they were when last they parted. 
He then sent them all back with corn except one, 
whom he retained in prison till they should come 
again. On the next trip he seemed to treat them 
kindly at first. But having hid his silver cup in 
the sack of the youngest, he had an officer sent to 
overtake them and search their sacks for the lost 
property. It was found, to their dismay, in Ben- 
jamin's sack. With sad and gloomy hearts they 
all go back to the governor and resign themselves 
to him as his slaves. It had come back to them. 
Their sin had found them out. Betribution to the 
full was upon them. As they had done, it was done 
unto them. 

The next and last case is that of Ahab and his 
wicked queen Jezebel. Ahab was king of Israel, 
and reigned in Samaria, He seems to have had a 
house in the city of Jezreel. And near that house 
or home of his was a vineyard owned by Naboth. 



Retribution. 



177 



Ahab wanted that vineyard, and offered to buy it, 
but Naboth refused to sell because it was the in- 
heritance of his fathers. So Ahab went into his 
house in Samaria and developed a case of the 
pouts, like a foolish child, because he could not do 
as he pleased. Jezebel inquired of him the trouble, 
and he told her that he wanted Naboth's vineyard, 
but he could not buy it, as Naboth would not sell. 
She told him to eat and be merry, and she would 
get the vineyard for him. So she wrote to the 
elders of Naboth's city to appoint a fast, or feast 
rather, and invite Naboth to it, and set him in a 
high place. And then while he was there to get 
two wicked men to come in and accuse Naboth of 
blaspheming God and the king, and have him car- 
ried out and stoned to death. All this was done. 
And she then told Ahab to go down and take pos- 
session of the vineyard, as Naboth w r as dead. 

And as Ahab reached the vineyard, he met Eli- 
jah the prophet, who denounced the judgments of 
God on both him and his wife. He told Ahab that 
dogs would lick his blood in the same place where 
they had licked that of Naboth. This was literally 
fulfilled in the case of Ahab's son Jehoram. II 
Kings 9 :26. Ahab himself was wounded in a 
battle and died in his chariot, and buried at Sama- 
ria. The blood was washed out of his chariot there 
and the dogs licked it also. I Kings 22 :38. And 
some time after this, Jehu became king, and had 
Jezebel thrown out of a window and trampled her 
under foot, and the dogs ate her flesh in Jezreel. 
II Kings 9:35, 36, 37. Thus retribution fell on 
these and on their posterity. For Jehu had all of 
Ahab's children and relatives put to death, as Na- 
both and his sons were stoned, so that the inherit- 
ance would revert to the king. As they had done, 
it was done unto them. 

12 



178 Six Choice Sermons. 



Other cases might be cited in the Bible, and in 
history; but I forbear. 

Now, let us apply the text to cases in our own 
experience and observation. We have all no doubt 
observed cases in which men and families have had 
to suffer the same things, in effect, that they had 
caused other people to suffer. As people sow, they 
must reap. Oppressors will be oppressed if it is in 
the third generation. Those who make drunkards 
will have drunkard in their own families sooner or 
later. "Murder will out." One's sins will find 
him out. "As thou hast done, it shall be done unto 
thee." 

And in our own experience, don't we often have 
to suffer things that remind us of something we 
did in the past? Especially is this true of those of 
us who gave unnecessary pain or trouble to our 
parents. All such things come back in one way or 
another. As we do, it will be done unto us. 

Then suffer this admonition : Be kind to your 
parents. Treat every one right. Do as you would 
be done by. Oppress none. Help all you can. 
Pray for everybody. Love everybody. Then, when 
retribution comes, as come it must, it will be a 
pleasure and not a grief. 



SERMON VI. 



The Oneness of God's People. 
Text: "That they all may be one." — John 17:21. 

Our Saviour prayed here for the unity of His 
people on earth. That there might be one flock, 
one shepherd, and one fold. The most lamentable 
fact in regard to Christianity at this time is its 
want of unity. But in discussing this matter, I 
shall not follow the usual line of thought, but a 
new line altogether, so far as I know. I shall 
plead for a unity of Christians on the old basis, 
and not the unity of churches on a new basis. For, 
in my judgment, the church of Jesus Christ is not 
divided at this time, nor has it ever been. That 
Christianity is divided is evident. Now, let us go 
to the root of the matter and see how all this want 
of unity among Christians came about. 

We will all admit that the original New Testa- 
ment churches, established by the inspired apos- 
tles, constituted a unity of doctrine, of form, of 
harmony, of work, and of fellowship. There was 
only one denomination. And again, all must ad- 
mit that these New Testament churches were right 
as to their organization, their faith, their practice 
and their ordinances. To say, or even to think 
otherwise, would be to impeach the Holy Spirit 
Himself. Then, all this being admitted, when did 
the apostolic church or churches begin to differ? 
Or when did they begin to split up into different 
denominations? My answer to these questions is 
this: The true church of Jesus Christ and His 
apostles has never undergone any radical or per- 
manent change, but it has existed as such through 
all the ages from apostolic times to the present 
day. I say radical or permanent, because during 



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Six Choice Sermons. 



the Dark Ages it sometimes happened that, on ac- 
count of terrible persecutions, the brethren became 
so scattered, and had so few facilities for meeting 
together and teaching and being taught, they could 
not well keep to the old principles in every partic- 
ular. But the time never did come but that, in 
some place, bodies of Christians could be found 
still holding to the main or fundamental principles 
of the apostolic church, and were observing the 
ordinances of the church as they were once for all 
delivered to the saints. These bodies or churches 
constituted during those dreadful times the woman 
or the true church in the wilderness. 

Now, let us go back and see how this came about 
that there was a great and rich body of so-called 
Christians persecuting another small and weak 
body of Christians, and trying by fire and sword 
to exterminate them from the face of the earth. 

Well, it was this way. When Jesus the Son of 
God was born, the devil tried to kill Him through 
Herod. Then when Jesus was baptized the devil 
was permitted to do his best to ruin the Saviour 
and the whole plan of salvation by corrupting the 
very Son of God Himself, through temptation. 
This having failed, he went to work through the 
Jewish rulers to destroy Jesus in some wav. At 

•J v 

last he seemed to succeed in this, as it was in ful- 
fillment of the Scriptures that He should die for 
His people. The devil thought then that the 
scheme of man's redemption was completely ruined 
forever. But to make the matter doubly sure, he 
had the grave sealed and guarded by the authority 
of the whole Roman Empire, whose power at that 
time was supreme in all the world. But seals and 
Roman guards were impotent to hold Him who 
was, though in the grave, the master of Rome and 
the devil too. So, when the Saviour had ascended 
to heaven and left a few fishermen and women to 



Oneness op God's People. 



181 



propagate His gospel and build up a kingdom that 
was to conquer all other kingdoms and fill the 
whole world, the old enemy, Satan, again applied 
to the Jewish rulers to quash the whole concern. 
But all their efforts were futile, because, as Gama- 
liel said, it was fighting against God. So the more 
they persecuted, the more Christianity spread. At 
last they succeeded in dispersing the Christians 
from Judea and Jerusalem into all surrounding 
countries. But that was the best thing that could 
be done. So all efforts through the Jews failed 
utterly. 

Satan's next attempt to destroy the church of 
God was through the Roman Empire as a ciyil 
power. In this great civil government Satan held 
a high seat. The infidel historian Gibbon tried 
hard to explain to his readers, in his "Decline and 
Fall of the Roman Empire/' why it was that Rome 
permitted and protected every form of heathen 
worship that had ever been invented by corrupt 
human hands, but sought, by every means in its 
great power, to suppress and stamp out Christian- 
ity. But with all his vast learning and research, 
Gibbon failed entirely to give any satisfactory so- 
lution of the problem, because he was an unbe- 
liever in Christianity. Minds much inferior to his, 
but imbued with the true spirit of the religion of 
Jesus Christ, may find the answer with the utmost 
ease. It is this : Satan, as has been said above, 
was the chief mjoral factor in Rome. All idolatry 
was of his invention, and well-pleasing to him. But 
Christianity was and is of God, and as such was 
hated by Satan with a perfect hatred. Hence he 
sought, through the emperors, and through all the 
branches of authority in the empire, to kill out and 
destroy the church of the true God. But, though 
Rome, instigated by the evil one, did her utmost, 
and blood flowed freely in all her provinces, and 



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Six Choice Sermons. 



under all her emperors for three centuries; and 
though the wild beasts in the amphitheatre were 
gorged with the warm flesh and blood of Chris- 
tians, yet the very blood of the martyrs became the 
seed of the church. Thus all Satan's efforts 
through Imperial Rome had failed. And Satan 
found himself in the predicament of a certain little 
boy many years ago. He came across one of those 
strange spider-like insects with a very small, round 
body and tremendously long legs, which, for want 
of a better name, the people called "grandsire gray- 
beard." This said boy was told by his elders not 
to kill the insect, for if he did, nine more would 
come in his place. So the boy let the graybeard 
go on his way unharmed. For he thought if he 
should kill him, and nine more came, and they like- 
wise should be killed, after awhile the whole house 
would be filled with them. Satan, however, did 
not finally conclude to stop killing Christians, that 
was contrary to his nature, but he did conclude to 
change his mode of proceedings to destroy the true 
church. So his next move was to try to destroy 
the church by corrupting some of its fundamental 
doctrines, and thereby taking away its power to 
antagonize his own kingdom, and be the means of 
saving men. And the means for doing this was 
readily found in the church itself. For the time 
has never been when the church of God was en- 
tirely free from bad men among its own members. 
Among the twelve disciples was one Judas. In the 
Pentecostal church at Jerusalem, the first organ- 
ized church in the world, there was an Ananias, 
In the church at Samaria there was Simon the sor- 
cerer. And Paul writes to Timothy of Demas and 
of Alexander the coppersmith. So all the evil one 
had to do was to get into some of the bad, unre- 
generate men who had by some means crept into 
the churches of the second and third centuries of 



Oneness of God's People. 183 

the Christian era, and work through them. And 
their first act was to eliminate repentance, the very 
mudsill on which Christianity is founded. Repent- 
ance was the first thing preached by John the Bap- 
tist, by Jesus the Christ, and by the apostles, and 
still is the burden of all sound preaching. For we 
are commanded to preach that men repent. But 
repentance is repugnant to the evil heart of man. 
It demands confession of sin in dust and ashes. 
It requires forsaking and hating sin in high and 
low places. It demands self-denial and cross-bear- 
ing. And it demands a new heart through this 
humble repentance, and faith in Jesus Christ and 
Him crucified. Against all these things the wicked 
heart of poor fallen man rebels. And so, in order 
to effect their purpose and thus eliminate this ob- 
jectionable feature, they seized upon the beautiful 
ordinance of baptism, w T hich was intended to sym- 
bolize the washing of regeneration by the Holy 
Spirit, and made of it regeneration itself, or the 
only means of effecting it. So, all one had to do 
to be saved was to be baptized and do as the pope 
or priest should tell him, and all would be well. 
And thus, in course of time, repentance toward 
God was replaced by penance, that is, a slight suf- 
fering for one's own sins, so that the priest could 
pardon them. The Holy Spirit was replaced by 
baptism in water, and the mumbling, meaningless 
words of a priest who was fully possessed by the 
spirit of the devil. Christ Himself was replaced 
by the pope, the son of perdition, and the chief ally 
of Satan himself. By these means Christianity 
began to grow popular among men. And then, to 
top the climax, Satan put it into the heart of Con- 
stantine, an emperor of the Roman world, to be- 
come a convert to Christianity, and to adopt it as 
the religion of the empire, and thus unite church 
and state in an unholy bond of union. The next 



184 



Six Choice Sermons. 



step was to unite all the separate organizations 
into one great body under the leadership of the 
Pope of Rome, who was called, by his deluded fol- 
lowers, the Vicar of Christ. That is, one possessed 
of power to do Christ's work on earth as his vice- 
gerent. And the final downward step was, to put 
the Bible away from the people and sink them as 
low as possible in ignorance and superstition, so 
that they would be simply passive in the hands 
of the pope to do his bidding. Thus gradually the 
fundamental doctrines of religion were changed so 
far as the masses of the people were concerned, 
and the organization of the church or churches of 
apostolic days completely revolutionized. 

But now, after all this was done, was the church 
of Jesus Christ corrupted? Not at all. Well, 
then, where was the true church? It was in the 
wilderness, in the place that God had prepared for 
it, where it was to remain for twelve hundred and 
sixty years. And what was this other great or- 
ganization that was called the church of God, and 
was making so much noise in the world and get- 
ting control of all things secular and religious? 
That was, and is, a counterfeit church pure RUf* 
simple. It was not, is not, and never will be, the 
church of Christ in any sense whatever ; but it was 
from start to finish, is to-day, and ever will be the 
corrupt and abominable mother of harlots and 
abominations of the earth. While Satan and his 
coadjutors were thus endeavoring to corrupt the 
doctrines of Christianity, and were setting on foot 
a great ecclesiastical organization, the true Chris- 
tians dropped out gradually without much noise, 
and held on to their religion, in the midst of irre- 
ligion, and kept pure the doctrines of the true 
church in the midst of corruption and falsehood. 
And when that great counterfeit church perceived 
this, and recognized the fact that a few true follow- 



Oneness of God's People. 



185 



ers of Christ dared to condemn them as the Anti- 
christ spoken of by John, then the pope and his 
people began to hurl anathemas against them as 
heretics worthy of nothing but death and damna- 
tion. Thus the breach between the true church of 
Jesus Christ and that accursed thing, the man of 
sin and son of perdition, was complete. And the 
gulf separating them was, and is, and ever will be, 
as wide as the distance between heaven and hell. 

Now, I am prepared to say that those, whom 
Rome called heretics and persecuted as long as she 
had power to do so, constituted the true church of 
Christ through all the Dark or Middle Ages of the 
world's history. They were the woman in the 
wilderness, as we have it in Revelation, twelfth 
chapter. And at first the great red dragon, and 
then the beast, his successor, cast out water from 
his mouth after the woman that she might be swal- 
lowed up of the flood. But the earth helped the wo- 
man by opening her mouth and absorbing the flood 
that was cast forth to drown the woman. The flood 
of water here cast out of the mouth of the serpent 
or dragon was the corrupt teachings and foolish 
dogmas that were scattered over the world by the 
devil and the pope. But the earth swallowed it 
all up, as a desert would a river flowing through it, 
before it could reach the asylum that God had pro- 
vided for the woman, His church. 

Of course the true gospel church all through 
these dreadful times was weak and hated by all the 
world besides. And what little crops out in the 
history of those days about them was mostly writ- 
ten by their enemies and bears the true mark of the 
Anti-christ, or Borne. But the things they were 
charged with, and for which many of them suf- 
fered, were the things the apostolic churches stood 
for, or would have condemned had they then ex- 
isted. These good people, being the true gospel 



186 



Six Choice Sermons. 



church, existed during all the ages down to and 
after the Reformation. They existed in different 
parts of Europe, and at different times, under dif- 
ferent names, derived from their leaders, or from 
the places in which they lived and flourished more 
or less. At the time of the Reformation they of- 
fered to become co-workers with the Reformers, 
but as their doctrine and practice were free from 
all the marks of the beast, and the Reformers 
thought best to retain many of those pernicious 
marks, there could be no union or agreement be- 
tween them; and, as a consequence, the Reformed 
churches afterwards became as bitter persecutors 
of the original church as Rome ever was. 

Now the next question is, what shall we make 
of those different organizations that sprung up 
during the Reformation period, and of others which 
have sprung up since? Well, the Reformers did 
a great work for the civil as well as the religious 
world. But their great blunder in religion was, 
they built not on the eternal rock only, but they 
built partly on the rock and partly on the sand; 
for they tried to reform Romanism as a system of 
religion, taking it for granted that it was the true 
church, only badly corrupted and defiled. That 
was their egregious error. Romanism was not in 
any sense the church of God and never had been. 
And to reform as rotten a thing as Romanism has 
ever been was about as hopeless a task as it would 
be to reform the devil himself, or to change the 
leopard's spots, or to wash an Ethiopian white. 
They couldn't reform popery; they couldn't make 
anything good out of Romanism. And so all they 
could do was to leave that false system entirely 
and go back all the way to the solid rock of gospel 
truth; or to secede from Romanism and set up 
for themselves, with a mixture of gospel and 
popery. They chose the latter ; and Christianity 



Oneness of God's People. 



187 



and the cause of truth have been suffering ever 
since on account of that sad blunder. 

These organizations, then, that came into exist- 
ence during the Reformation period, and some that 
have come up since are, to say the most of them 
that can be truthfully said, organizations of Chris- 
tians, but not gospel churches. They have a great 
deal of truth and good gospel doctrine, but they 
are sadly beset and hampered and defiled by many 
of the old marks of the Romish beast, that had 
their origin in the old serpent. Many great and 
good men in these organizations to-day see all this 
as well as I do, but their denominational pride is 
so strong they won't confess it. 

Now let us note the marks of a real gospel church 
— the church of the apostolic age. A true church 
is thus defined : "A body of baptized believers, ob- 
serving the ordinances of the Lord's house, as they 
were once for all delivered to the saints." And 
the word baptized here is immersed, buried with 
Christ in baptism. The word believers means that 
all have made an intelligent profession of their 
faith and been voluntarily immersed on that pro- 
fession. Again an apostolic church was a little 
republic wholly independent of all other such or- 
ganizations, and having no head but Christ, and 
no lawgiver but the word of God. And again 
apostolic churches had but two orders of officers — 
pastors and deacons. Pastors were sometimes 
called by other names, but it is generally conceded 
that they designated the same office. Again, apos- 
tolic churches were missionary in a preeminent de- 
gree. The great commission was to them their 
marching orders. Now is there any church or de- 
nomination of Christians to-day that shows all these 
marks of apostolic churches in organization, faith, 
and practice? Certainly there is? The Regular 
or Missionary Baptist churches fill the bill in every 
particular. 



188 



Six Choice Sermons. 



Now let us notice some of the marks of Roman- 
ism that all Pedo-baptist churches hold, to a greater 
or less extent. The first is ecclesiasticism. That 
is the union of all organizations into one great 
body, which great body is called the church. This 
body is ruled over by one supreme officer called 
pope, bishop, presbyter, etc. And then under them 
other subordinate officers. All this was unknown 
to the apostles and sprang up together with Ro- 
manism, and is of Rome only, and is one of the un- 
failing marks of Anti-christ. Then, again, dif- 
ferent modes of baptism had their origin in the in- 
cipient stages of Romanism, and were sanctioned 
by a council of that church in 1311 A. D. That 
council made pouring or sprinkling equally valid 
with immersion. Hence that is of Rome only. 
And the baptism of infants grew out of the old 
dogma of baptismal regeneration. When this error 
became established in the beginning of Romanism, 
mothers wanted to know how their babies could 
be saved without baptism. The result was it 
finally became the practice of the Roman Catholic 
church to regenerate all the children by baptism. 
This is of Rome sure enough; and how a Pedo- 
baptist minister of education and sense can prac- 
tice this most egregious error of Rome with a 
straight face is more than I can understand. 
Another thing coming from Rome is, making the 
ordinances sacraments. Baptism and the Lord's 
Supper are by many denominated sacraments. 
That means, if I understand it aright, that through 
these ordinances special grace or graces come to 
those receiving them. But these two beautiful 
church ordinances were never intended to be the 
means of conferring graces or blessings, but to set 
forth the two fundamentals of Christ's redeeming 
work. The supper points to His crucified body 
and His shed blood. Baptism points to His burial 



Oneness of God's People. 189 

and resurrection. His death and His resurrection 
constitute the two pillars on which the redemp- 
tion of the sinner is founded. 

In conclusion, then, we have found these things 
to be true: That Christ and His apostles founded 
the true church of God. That this church has ex- 
isted from the day of Pentecost down to the 
present day. Jesus said, "The gates of hell shall 
never prevail against it." That this church has 
never been permanently corrupted or changed. 
That those things which seemed to be changes in 
doctrine and practice during the second, third, and 
fourth centuries, resulted in the upbuilding of Ro- 
man Catholicism and the total separation of that 
wicked concern from the true church of Jesus 
Christ. That this true church existed all during 
the persecutions of the civil Roman Empire, and 
all through the still worse persecutions of papal 
Rome, even with its bloody inquisition, and all 
through the turmoils and changes of the Reforma- 
tion period, and finally emerged into the light of 
the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, 
unhurt and unstained, as well as unchanged. Her 
blood has stained and hallowed the soil of Asia, 
Africa, Europe, and America. She has never per- 
secuted, but has always been the sufferer along 
that line. She has always stood for the word of 
God in the true and simple meaning and for the 
Bible in the hand of the people. She has ever 
stood for religious liberty and for the freedom of 
one's conscience, to worship without the interfer- 
ence of civil powers. She has ever stood for a con- 
verted membership. She has always advocated the 
immersion of believers only, thereby excluding un- 
conscious infants from that ordinance. She has 
ever taught and practiced the confining of the 
Lord's Supper to baptized members in good stand- 
ing of true apostolic churches only. And, that 



190 



Six Choice Sermons. 



Roman Catholicism has never been the church of 
J esus Christ in any sense whatever ; but that she is 
a counterfeit organization claiming to be the 
church. And further, that all those organizations 
which came forth out of Romanism, either directly 
or indirectly, and which have retained more or less 
of the errors of the popish church, are not the true 
church, or churches of Jesus Christ, and never can 
be, so long as they hold on to Rome's inventions 
and refuse to conform to the word of God. Could 
the Apostle Paul come again to this earth and be 
permitted to enter a Baptist church and hear the 
word preached, and see the observance of the 
Lord's Supper, and witness baptisms as they are 
now performed by us, he would recognize at once 
that he was in a real church of Christ. But if he 
should enter a Pedo-baptist church and see, at 
least, what they call baptism performed on a little 
child, he would certainly have to ask some one to 
tell him what kind of an organization that could 
be, and what they were doing to or for that child. 
For surely Paul never saw or dreamed of such a 
thing in the church of Christ in his day. And, 
lastly, we have found that, though the real church 
has not been divided, yet Christianity is badly di- 
vided. And this we all deplore. 

Now we come back to the main point of the text. 
Jesus prayed that His people might all be one, as 
He and the Father were one. But under present 
conditions how is this to be done? It can never be 
accomplished by forming a union of these different 
denominations. A general congress of Christians 
can never invent a platform on which they can all 
unite. Then what can be done? Well, it is sim- 
ple enough. Here in the midst of all these con- 
tending parties and factions of Christians there is 
the true and apostolic church in all its simplicity, 
standing squarely on the Bible, and every inch of 



Oneness of God's People. 191 

that Bible, and inviting them to cast aside all their 
creeds, confessions, and Romish dogmas, and take 
shelter under her wings that have covered the mar- 
tyrs of all ages. 

When God had shown Moses the forms of the 
holy things He was to make for the tabernacle, 
His last charge was, "See thou make them after the 
pattern showed thee in the mount." So here in 
the midst of a divided Christendom, is the pattern 
given from the cross of Calvary, so to speak, and 
Jesus is calling to His people of every name, and 
saying, see the pattern and conform to it. Then 
let all things, however old and sacred they may 
seem to be, that differentiate all other denomi- 
nations from the pattern, be cast aside, as the 
errors of fallible men, and let them conform strictly 
to, and be content with, what Christ and His in- 
spired apostles have laid down as the pattern. 

Then His people will all be one. One flock, one 
shepherd, and one fold. So mote it be. 



Amen. 



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